I hope the post by Lisa Goodman illustrates that the city's actions on Gaviidae Common were not arbitrary. Thanks to her leadership on this, we know the facts and have the confidence to make tough choices on behalf of taxpayers who have told us over and over again that they are tired to having City Hall play patsy with public dollars.
Lisa's tough-minded, knowledge-based approach has been the key to our ability to substantially change the way this city does development. Whether you agree or disagree with this decision, people should recognize what it means to have this kind of leadership from the chair of the Community Development Committee. She is setting a new standard. One more point that I think is very important to note...which goes beyond the numbers that St. Anthony based his story around: Those who have questioned development deals in recent years have often been cast as "anti-downtown." In this case, and others, the opposite is true. We made this call because we have a great deal of confidence in downtown. There are no other shopping centers in the country that have three world-renown anchor stores, the country's first urban Target store and a strong base of smaller shops; has 165,000 people who can walk to those stores in shirtsleeves through skyways; has 30,000 people who can walk there from their homes and many more within a exceptionally strong market base; is linked by skyway to one of the country's most successful convention centers and connected hotels; has major league baseball and basketball and some of the country's best known arts institutions; a new entertainment complex and soon, a great central library........ With all this in place....thanks to massive infusions of public money and civic support, we do not believe developers should be coming to us to say they have so little confidence in this city that they aren't going to pay the public the money it is owed. I stand ready to aggressively help any downtown property owner who wants to attract new tenants. We have an outstanding case to make. But if someone wants to avoid making investments in their property, and not aggressively go after the new tenants that could thrive in downtown....we are not going to bail them out. R.T. Rybak East Harriet _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
