REWIND (December, 2005): "Residents … remain acutely vulnerable to rumors, innuendo and misinformation."

(December 8, 2005)

Unfortunately, the Scribner Place project continues to be the whipping boy preferred by those among them, like 1st District Councilman Dan Coffey and his Siamese Councilman, 3rd District CM Steve Price, who are innately suspicious of an evolving world that seems foreign and incomprehensible to them, one populated by odd people with strange preferences like exercise, reading, sushi and espresso, and who, to them, symbolize detached affluence and practiced disdain for the working classes and the underprivileged.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and both Mr. Coffey and Mr. Price probably know it, but grandstanding and ward heeling become second nature when you’ve been at it for so long.

These people represent hope for a new economy, and New Albany desperately needs to get smarter so all of the city’s residents can reap a share of the benefits from such a new economy. The good news is that many, if not all, of the factors necessary to get us headed in the right direction are already here. They just need help.

Scribner Place, while hardly a panacea, is precisely the sort of cost-effective partnership between government and the private sector that stands to bring people – including non-residents -- downtown. In conjunction with the Ohio River Greenway, the Cannon sports park, Main Street and Spring Street area plans, Al Goodman’s plans for the Moser Tannery, existing downtown businesses and new ones that are coming soon (trust me, I know), Scribner Place is a major step in the right direction.

I know it doesn’t seem this way to those for whom envy and spite are the dominant personal and political modes of expression, and it’s a genuine pity that they’ll be missing out on the good times ahead out of sheer stubbornness, but as they say so often, it’s just their opinions – which aren’t necessarily facts, and which definitely aren’t valid reasons to dismiss progress in New Albany.