Go ahead and admit it. You've been craving more controversy at Lincoln's favorite intersection, 48th and O. Here's your controversy: the City is again facing trouble associated with access issues to properties on O Street. At stake, according to a recently-filed lawsuit, is the arrival of Staples at the troubled corner. The suit alleges that the City accepted $160,000 less for an adjacent property than what Realty Trust, the group trying to bring Staples to town, offered, and in addition that sale came with O Street access. That is a huge policy change, if true. The City, you might recall, spent $2.7 million to get rid of O Street access in that area.
Raise your hand if you are shocked -- shocked! -- that the City may manage to once again make the redevelopment of 48th and O far more difficult and expensive than it ought to be. No one? I didn't think so.
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Can’t they just press the ‘easy’ button and get the Staples going already?
How many property developers would be shocked to learn that direct access to O Street at that location isn’t going to happen? Indeed, how many normal (I use the term carelessly) drivers would be shocked to find the Staples entrance on 50th Street - just like Walgreen’s across the street?
If O Street access is such a honking big deal for the developers, how come they aren’t retro-fitting Guitars and Cadillacs for file folders and rubber bands? If you want your own driveway, buy older property, farther away from the corner, and you might get to keep it. The road rules changed a long, long time ago and there’s simply no excuse for these developers to be surprised, especially after they’ve decorated four sides of every intersection south of Highway 2.
What is reliable, however, is the knee-jerk, anti-government reaction whenever any corporatist shill pulls the “poor, poor, pitiful me” act.
Seriously. You want to go to Staples but you just can’t figure out the complicated route from O Street into the parking lot? No wonder the South Pointe merchants all went out of business when Colleen Seng repossessed their driveways.
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