Amid the stench of hypocrisy, fiscal turnstiles begin spinning as Redevelopment awards sports complex bid.

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?

Parks, pools and streets paved with bonds: Who are you, and what did you do with CM Cappuccino?

At last evening's city council meeting, councilman Dan Coffey relentlessly spearheaded the body's initial approval of bonds equal to an amount required to purchase 45,581 urban trash receptacles (my calculation) or 25 additional Rent Boy Parks (Kevin Zurschmiede's estimate), all for the purpose of (a) quality of life amenities to please citizens and attract the right people to town, and (b) comprehensive citywide paving*, all wrapped into a project that first came to the public's attention maybe two months ago.









That's right. Coffey's now the $19 Million Dollar Man.









Surreal doesn't begin to describe it.

You can read the details elsewhere, but as the Hubbell telescopes are focused on distant galaxies from whence came the alien currently occupying Coffey's body, I have one additional comment to make.

Councilman Scott Blair made a statement during the course of the bonding debate that merits examination: "Either you're for parks or you're against them."

Afterwards, when I told him I disagreed, he explained that he felt it necessary to plainly state the situation so as to concentrate attention on the facts of the resolution.

For the consideration of Mr. Blair, who quite often notes aloud that as a banker, he's a cost-to-benefit kind of guy, I have only this to say: If costs and benefits apply to numbers, they pertain equally to language. Opposing a specific bonding proposal for a specific parks and recreation plan is not opposing the broader notion of parks. I submit that there can be a cost when it comes to over-simplified axioms, as well as a benefit to regarding expensive and complex proposals with precise thinking, not either/or.

Taking this a step further, can someone (anyone) explain how and when parks and recreational facilities came to be the sole measurement of our civic libido as compared with the county?

* whereas the larger parks and recreation expenditure was waved through, the council decided it needed more information to bond paving, and the resolution was tabled when former president Benedetti ... oh, never mind.

Malysz refutes reader’s assertions.

Carl Malysz, director of community development, has written a letter to the editor of ghe Tribune.

LETTERS: July 15, 2009 ... Malysz refutes reader’s assertions

I would like to clear the air regarding the England administration’s efforts to acquire the Hoosier Panel property, which was the subject of a letter to the editor written by Tim Deatrick.

The New Albany Redevelopment Commission, which at the time included membership by Mr. Dan Coffey, decided to purchase the property from the current owner for redevelopment purposes, so as to rid the Fairmont neighborhood of what has become a serious blighting influence to the area ...

Open thread: Brownfields clean-up at old Hoosier Panel site?

Here's the scoop from the morning C-J.

New Albany Redevelopment Commission order new tests on site, by Grace Schneider (Courier-Journal).

New Albany's plan to buy an old industrial woodworking site as a possible "brownfields" reclamation project has raised concerns because of a recent environmental report that found heavy metals in groundwater there.

The findings of the study prompted the New Albany Redevelopment Commission to order additional tests for the former Hoosier Panel site at 2045 Silver St. to determine whether the contamination has spread beyond the property. The 15-acre site borders a residential area.