Most of us have joined the chorus of cheers from the Hoosier Panel neighborhood with respect to the recreation complex. It's the $9 million aquatics center project at the former Camille Wright facility that strains credulity.
New Albany panel awards $5.08 million bid for sports complex; Project is at former Hoosier Panel site, by Grace Schneider (C-J)
Appropriately, my favorite passage from Grace's article is this:
Neighbors had complained for years that the property is an eyesore and a drag on property values. Most have cheered the city’s plan to clear the site and create park and green space where factories and modest homes share streets around the rail tracks.
Not coincidentally, New Albany's 1960s-era one-way arterial streets (Market, Spring, Elm) also are a drag on property values for those living and investing in homes on or near them. One-way streets also tend to contradict the aims of money spent on neighborhood stabilization and revitalization.
Thus, we see the city spending money to improve property values in the Hoosier Panel neighborhood, and also on Main Street with its impending corridor improvement project, which will have the effect of diverting even more traffic to one-way streets already serving as colossal impediments to property values and quality of life.
And yet, when midtown residents voice precisely the same concerns to the city as those of these other areas, the only sound being heard in response is the muffled shuffle of foot-dragging.
Feet can be good, as when they're deployed toward enhanced walkability. One-way streets compromise walkability. They compromise safety, property values and QOL. It's a no-brainer, Scott, David ... Jeff.
With a new year approaching, isn't it time the city got its act together?
Wouldn't some semblance of a plan be of assistance?
I'll be asking these questions well into 2015, won't I?
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