Thursday, February 22, 2007

Reflections Of The Fort In Florida


Runtime: 12:42

Posted by scott spaulding at 2/22/2007 04:12:00 PM  

Labels: , ,

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's a thoughtful piece. Thanks for posting it. I hope everyone takes the time to review it.

I don't knoe enough about urban planning to comment on the appropriateness of the West Palm approach, other than it seem so have worked based upon my visits there.

It seems to me that Fort Wayne is taking the opposite approach, to the extent we are taking any approach at all. The Harrison Square project came to my mind when I heard the speaker talk about the failed "beggar mentality" when West Palm was "literally willing to do anything to get developers to come in." Supporting this project, even in part, with the "nobody else is interested argument,"
as is frequently done, makes no sense to me. "Yes. I'm going to go out with Jane, the physically abusive crack addict. Nobody else was interested."

While we occasionally discuss changing a block or two of downtown streets, in my 20 years here we have done nothing but continually expand the main north and southwest arteries, which, not coincidentally, have seen large residential, then retail, then public (schools, library branches, etc.) growth.

Mark Garvin

2/22/2007 06:08:00 PM
scott spaulding said...

Mark, thanks for posting.

The reason I posted this video was because in the first minute I thought to myself, "Wow, this is like watching a video about Fort Wayne, but with palm trees!"

The points about an addiction to cars, which resulted in widening streets, too many surface lots, and a worse off pedestrian experience that drove people out to the suburbs really hit home to me when thinking about Fort Wayne.

I have to disagree with you about the beggar mentality in Fort Wayne. The city didn't beg Hardball Capital to come here. The city had the Blueprint Plus plan in place before Hardball was in the picture. Hardball came to the city, not the other way around, when they saw the plan and that we were applying some foresight with our planning.

They saw that the Blueprint had identified a downtown ballpark as a potential catalyst, saw that the Baseball Plus committee confirmed that viability, and decided to buy the team with the goal of flexing their mixed-use development muscles.

The city didn't beg for Harrison Square either. They didn't have to say "we want a developer to build something downtown, please help us". Hardball came here on their own after searching through many teams and markets. Because Hardball is genuinely interested, the words on the page of the Blueprint Plus report about a downtown ballpark became what we know as Harrison Square.

Instead of commissioning studies and plans and then setting them on shelves, the city is acting on one of its own recommendations. I take that as a positive sign that things are turning around.

2/22/2007 08:08:00 PM
Anonymous said...

"Don't give up your streets, they're really important..."

*COUGH*harrison*COUGH*

2/27/2007 01:14:00 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)