I saw an article in the local rag this morning that piqued my interest a bit. The city has hired another "fix downtown" consulting firm and the results are in: The flooding problem can be fixed for a mere ten million dollars. Actually not fixed, but alleviated to a great extent. Some city commissioners are just beside themselves with glee. Here, they have an opportunity to spend lots of money they don't have to wind up cutting corners and in the long run making things worse. At least this has been the result of many years of downtown revitalization.
If all the money that has been flushed down King Creek and Brush Creek for these "projects" had been wisely spent, downtown would be either a beautiful place to attract merchants and consumers, or it would have been razed and possibly turned into a municipal park. The latter would have been my choice if I had known that all the waste was going to happen.
Nothing good is going to come of any downtown plans until a comprehensive effort is made to do all that needs be done. Make a long range plan, do the work in phases and not haphazardly, and set a time line and adhere to it. Or raze it.
Curiously, the Johnson City Development Authority (JCDA) is not mentioned in the article. This sort of gives me the willies, because their stench is all over the place. My plan of action would be to merge the JCDA with the Johnson City Planning Commission, hire a city planner (preferrably an engineer) that knows how to get the job done, cure the flooding problem, make most of downtown off limits to traffic, at least parts of Main and Market streets, insist the State put an usable access and egress for I-26 into downtown, create parking for the public, even if it means parking garages, and give the old buildings a facelift without losing their charm. How much money? Over the lifetime of the project, more than a billion dollars; a lot more, most likely!
Or ... raze it!
3 comments:
wala pulos imo blog.
Leave it gvt to screw it up. They ought to some plans out there and let the people decide. They also should not raise taxes to get these plans done. But they always find a way to weasel more of our hard earned dollars.
Thanks, lotto tickets.
Hi Mark.
They have a bunch of building owners downtown who are willing to foot some of the bill, and there are urban grants from US to help some, but the taxpayers won't go unscathed, I suppose. They will probably float a bond to get most of the money, then count on sales tax revenue from the businesses to pay a big portion of it back.
But instead of doing it by a sensible plan, it will be a helter-skelter affair and the rich will get richer... you know how it goes.
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