Showdown on Church Street
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Showdown on Church Street
Professional wrestling made an appearance at City Hall on Wednesday afternoon.
Submitted by Dan Palmer on Thu, 07/16/2009 - 9:13pm
Professional wrestling made an appearance at City Hall on Wednesday afternoon.
The mayor quickly read a statement giving the city's position and presented his alternate plan for the bus station. He stated that the time has come to end talk about the theater portion of the project and to focus on renovating the Auditorium Theatre. The plan moved the bus station to the west, away from the buildings being converted into residential space on St. Paul, and reduced the size of the "shed" by moving eight bus bays to the northwest edge of Division St. It is a different plan but not radically so. The MCC campus would be built as designed and the theater site would be opened to private development instead of becoming a "staging area" for the construction equipment and then become another in a long line of unneeded parks at the city's center.
County Executive Brooks recited her rehearsed lines about "the 11th Hour," the thousands of jobs that will be created (temporary construction jobs), the positive effect on downtown the project will have, how she needs to better educate the city council on why her plan as is the only one that can be built and so on with a delivery that would have made Linda McMahon proud.
Mark "The Rock" Aesch pleaded his case in a style that would be referred to in pro-wrestling circles as "cutting a promo." With forcefulness and confidence he spoke of his concern for the 10th grader city student missing out on all the opportunities for his or her future if the MCC campus was not built. How he felt an obligation to the "bus rider" and the "bricklayer" to provide more shelter and the jobs needed to build it. The council MUST approve the project as planned or it all goes away!
Thomas Flynn voiced his concerns that the $24 million in Federal Transit Administration funds would not be available to help pay for a new MCC campus. The campus would share infrastructure with the bus station and therefore could use the FTA funds for its construction.
Arnie Rothschild of the RBTL was not sitting with the Main and Clinton board at the front of the room and did not speak at the meeting. It seemed to be an indicator of the new theater's fading prospects for realization. Why his team did not have him up front with them is not a question that I can answer but it did seem a bit dubious.
Having been used to taking over the room as they have at the meetings and events organized by the RenSquare partners, they were not prepared for the negative reception their statements and bad attitudes would receive from the members of the city council.
It is easy to be smug and talk tough about the eminent domain process and the necessity to approve the project as is or risk losing it all when you are throwing the party, or when your board is represented by only one governmental official from the city that will bear the costs of this project for decades to come. However, they were now in the council's lair and would be blasted and questioned for over two hours by a city council that has felt left out of the process until the last minute; who had to call this meeting or else have no chance to discuss their concerns about the plan; who were now being threatened to approve it as is within five days or else be the ones responsible for killing the whole project.
The council, regardless of the strong personalities and personal issues of some of the members, came out firing and took charge of the meeting. They asked the right questions and let Maggie and Mark know that their strong talk and threats were not doing them any good.
They questioned why, when the president just spoke about the need to support community colleges in cities across the country with federal monies, we are arguing over $24 million dollars? While it is nothing to sneeze at, the FTA monies are only 10% of the $230 million estimated cost of RenSquare. Wouldn’t the federal community college monies replace the FTA monies? Why should they take someone's private property for a theater that we all know will not be funded and will not pay taxes just like the other two facilities at RenSquare? How much more prime downtown real estate can we take off the tax roles while subsidizing the theater with tax monies? How can you say that you can change the plans later if the theater is not funded (in as little as six months from now) but you cannot change the plans to eliminate the theater and reduce the bus station's size now? Do we not have a responsibility to the local, state and federal taxpayers to not take this money just because it is available with no regard to the economic sustainability of the project in the future? If the final plan was approved by the Main and Clinton board in February why did you wait until June to approach us about the eminent domain approvals?
I was very proud of the council. They all stood up to the threats and arrogance of the good cop-bad cop show that was Maggie and Mark and really were the champions of the city that day. Now, if they only back up the talk with action, or in this case a lack of action, by refusing to vote on the project by the 24th of this month.
Now that Harry is assured to be on the ballot we must do what we can to make sure he gets the chance to sit in the council chambers and fight for our city against those that would force their bad projects and policies on its citizens. Full speed ahead!
