The DLA Says No Way

By: Mr. Wilson on November 14, 2009
5 comments
Oh now I get it! Downtown Lincoln Association's new platform is "asphalt parking lots good, new construction outside of the Haymarket bad". It's not a position they had made explicit to the public before, but it so perfectly explains how we ended up with two parking lots instead of "Catalyst One" and a plaza; and it explains why they oppose the redevelopment of the block bounded by 10th, 11th, M, and N. Actually, the DLA lists several reasons to oppose the project:
  • Loss of downtown parking. Forget economic development, we want a place to park our cars!
  • Inconsistency with the Downtown Master Plan. The Master Plan is a living, breathing document. This project proposes a hotel (visitors!), apartments (residents!), retail (sales tax!), and parking (cars!). Those are all supposed to be good things. If common ground cannot be found between a $45 million, mixed-use project and the Plan, then the Plan is crap.
  • A glut of hotels. I'll come back to this one.
  • Finishing the job. It's fine to want to ensure that a project has the resources to finish -- responsible even. We don't want a half-finished project uglying up Downtown. (cough Catalyst One cough) But opposing the project on these grounds without any direct knowledge of the specific financing situation of this project? Foolish.
Now about that glut of hotels. You know, it's funny. I don't recall the DLA coming out against any of the other hotel proposals in Lincoln. Does it strike you as just a tiny bit odd that they would single out this project for opposition, but not the others? I wonder if any members of the DLA's Board of Directors could explain that to us. Perhaps one of: Will Scott; Brett Harris; Steve Hilton; Kent Peterson; or Kim Ringo-Bright. Would one of you five like to explain to us what's going on here?

Comments

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D. L. Whitehead
November 14, 2009 at 4:23PM

Spot On Analysis Mr. Wilson!

Matthew Platte
November 14, 2009 at 6:37PM

Minor quibble: we don’t all agree that cars! is a Good Thing(tm) downtown. 

I’m not up-to-date on the details but I wonder how significant is it that this particular project looks like it’s mostly home-grown whereas all the other hotels come from elsewhere?

CS
November 15, 2009 at 4:07AM

Or that the push behind this one is from Mr. Archer, who owns a ‘pawn shop’ (I didn’t see that as being relevant to anything in the article, except to put Mr. Archer in his place) among other things.

Gene
November 16, 2009 at 3:19AM

I would argue that Catalyst One is a project that hasn’t started, instead of a half-finished one.

Mr. Wilson
November 16, 2009 at 1:06PM

I disagree. When you bulldoze four buildings, you’ve started the project.

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