The hoary editorial board attempts to use its logic:
The fact that no developer has stepped forward to embrace the idea with financing and risk-taking is the idea's chief obstacle. (P-G)
Did the city advertise or even allude to interest in developers doing so? Did we ever send out an RFP? Businesspeople don't go out of their way to plan and draft things which rely on partners, when those key partners evince a strong, negative interest in doing so.
INTERESTING: Reuters, Wired, Envirement. Just play along here for a minute: about how many jobs and how much tax revenue would this bring? Can you say, "First-Source hiring"?
*-UPDATE: Back to square two (comments).
**-UPDATE II: The clock is ticking. Adaptationists cry shenanigans pretty loudly (Trib, Brandolph).
Excuse my ignorance on this, but has anyone asked a councilperson to designate the Arena as an historic structure?
ReplyDelete@Jack- It doesn't take a council member to get the city's historic designation evaluation process going; anybody can initiate it by filing an application. That's probably coming. The hitch is even if it earns historic designation from the city, the city's Historic Review Commission can still vote to tear it down -- which is typically unusual -- but we have reached a point where a majority of that commission has been appointed by our present mayor.
ReplyDeleteIn my analysis, the only thing that will save this building is popular support, including some from the Hill ... and the only thing that will generate that support is a stirring and solid vision ... and the only way to acquire such an implementable vision is to release an RFP (like we might have done a year ago) and buy time for it to generate submissions. How we get the city to release an RFP I don't know, and to whom exactly we address it I'm not entirely sure either; the Penguins possess development rights to that land, so it'd have to be aimed at prospective operators or else some kind of middlemen.
and the only thing that will generate that support is a stirring and solid vision
ReplyDeleteThat's probably right, but also problematic. I associate 'vision' with a Prof. Florida-type push for hipster-centric amenities at the expense of things like paved streets or improving the schools.