In Thursday’s edition of the Tribune, county commissioner Steve Bush ruminated on the $5.8 million appraisal of the Grant Line Road property that includes the downtrodden but nonetheless historic building that houses the county’s Youth Shelter.
His conclusion? Use the predominantly green property to build a new City County Building nearer to the Interstate.
Why? Because to do so would represent a future-oriented perspective.
Of course, comic relief was provided by county council kingpin Larry McAllister, who noted the absence of money, the hopelessness of the situation, and the dearth of any ideas on his part to remedy the situation.
Presumably these admissions of political impotence are designed to guarantee his re-election by way of assuring constituents that he'll work to keep them poor.
In today’s Courier-Journal, it is revealed that Clarksville’s town government has approached the owners of the recently vacated Value City on Eastern Boulevard with a mind toward flipping the town hall currently located off Veterans Parkway and redeveloping the shopping center area and its acres of unused concrete for use as the new town hall.
Granted, the situations aren’t entirely analogous; Veterans Parkway is an exurban blemish, but Clarksville has a more valuable hand to play as a result.
At the same time, with downtown New Albany properties available for adaptive reuse (even the old M. Fine factory building makes sense in this context), is abandoning the city center for increasingly rare suburban green space really a future-oriented perspective?
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6 comments:
Ever notice how none of our resident "fiscal conservatives" ever explain how wasting preexisting resources in favor of replacing them with more expensive yet inferior facsimiles meshes with their self-described ideology?
I was surprised a couple of months ago to learn that a friend of mine didn't realize Stephen Colbert did in-character parody. His confusion, though, becomes more understandable each day.
There's a column topic: When you've been normalized into absurdity, how do you tell?
I read the article in the Tribune yesterday. I got the impression that the new City-County Building to which Mr. Bush referred would, under his plan, be built in the urban west-end of New Albany, not at the current home of the Youth Shelter.
I agree, however, that the best step local government could take, from both an environmental and a revitalization standpoint, would be to respond to overcrowding of governmental offices by moving to existing buildings. This could serve as motivation for others to be re-developers; often a better idea than greenfield development.
Point taken, John, and when I jotted these thoughts, the article wasn;t on line for me to check.
I suppose it is moot if developing the suburban green field is necessary to build downtown, irespective of exact location.
Either way, it certainly doesn't excuse the deterioration that occurred to the Grant Line building on the County's watch.
Though still better built than anything we could afford now, it's comparatively less of an asset than it was before owing to neglect, whether it's to be sold or reused.
I hope the County doesn't build in my neighborhood. The code enforcement officer has enough to do already.
The last I heard someone (John?) had proposed the Tabernacle and some creative modern attached in-fill as a possible new city-county building. I as well find it absurd we are not ASAP re-adapting every solid old building and enhancing Our already-built neighborhoods.
Question is, could the vacated city-county building be used to house the overcrowding jail situation?
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