Earlier today, it was noted hereabouts that Bob Caesar, a social climbing Faux Democrat, is among the bloc of five council votes favoring the expenditure of a whopping $8.5 million to reclaim with requisite posh the long dormant Reisz Furniture building for use as a luxury government center.
ON THE AVENUES: Histrionic preservation? $8.5 million to gift Jeff Gahan with a new city hall "want" is inexcusable and simply obscene in a time of societal need.
The others favoring financial profligacy are Matt Nash (5th district), Greg Phipps (3rd), Pat McLaughlin (4th), all Gahanocrats, and from across the aisle, David (Buildings Not People) Barksdale.
Memories are short, and it has been only six years since since the most hopeful Reisz resuscitation idea in decades passed through the Redevelopment Commission with glowing reviews.
The Sterling Group approached city council in 2012 with a plan to transform the degraded structure (and the adjacent property now occupied by Underground Station) into Legacy at Riverside, a 74-unit senior living complex for eligible low- to middle-income older folks.
Caesar promptly allied with former councilman Kevin Zurschmiede, the latter an actual Republican, to summarily derail Sterling's project, successfully floating a resolution that tarred Legacy at Riverside with the aporophobic brush usually reserved for public housing denunciations, although the proposed development had nothing whatever to do with NAHA.
At least in part as a result of Caesar's and Zurschmiede's hatchet job, the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority did not approve low-income tax credits for the Legacy at Riverside. At the time, a rising local political leader had this to say about it, and we turn to the newspaper's Daniel Suddeath for the rest of the story.
Mayor Jeff Gahan released a statement Friday expressing disappointment with IHCDA’s decision.
He said the Legacy at Riverside “would have given a dilapidated city block $12 million worth of development. The seniors that would reside there could have visited our downtown restaurants and shops, and contributed to the local economy in a big way.”
The administration estimated the property tax base would have risen from about $10,000 to $40,000 annually on the lot due to the Legacy at Riverside project.
However, Councilman Bob Caesar estimated the city would lose millions of dollars in property taxes over the life of the developments if they received credits when he voted in favor of the opposition resolution.
Louisville company LDG is proposing Summit Springs, which is not offered as an age-based development. The earnings ceiling would be 60 percent of the Area Median Income for residency at Summit Springs.
Attempts to reach LDG for comment on the status of Summit Springs were unsuccessful Friday.
Gahan said that at least a conversation has begun about housing in New Albany.
“Both public and private housing issues need to be a part of our public discussion,” he said.
See: Gahan's been stuck on the word "dilapidated" for six years.
I suppose Caesar is at least consistent in resolutely opposing affordable housing, seeing he has forever confused lower-income citizens with a lower class of citizenry.
But what the hell happened to Dear Leader?
Here he was, at the beginning of his reign, vanquishing Caesar's myopia with well-chosen comments about housing issues. Now he's demolishing public housing units and building statues to himself -- and almost none of it has been conducted publicly.
Shall we affirm the truth of the old saying, "absolute power corrupts absolutely"?
It's also instructive that during the very same IHCDA low-income tax credits award cycle, credits were denied to another project: "The proposed 104-unit Summit Springs project that would be located near the Interstate 265 interchange off State Street."
Welcome to Weird New Albany. Now that Summit Springs has been rendered into a partnership of sorts between its greed-headed developers and City Hall, and since it is being devoted to hotels and retail, not apartments, those bumps from 2012 are forgotten, and Caesar and Gahan can hold hands while praising the view from the Taco Bell by the strip mine.
Moreover, having chased away Sterling, these two political lovebirds can bond over Reisz as a paean to luxury governance.
A skin-in-the-game skin flick, as it were. There's something eternal about this ... and thoroughly nauseating, so make it "infernal" instead.
Following are some posts from the period in question.
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Shambolic NA: Big ticket jewelry and lower-income tax credits. (February 25, 2012)
As the excerpts here illustrate, rental housing owner Kevin Zurschmiede voted both ways while wearing different hats, putting him into position to tie King Larry's all-time flip-flop record by abstaining the next time it comes up ... and the developer did not fail to notice it. The administration took no public position until after the state declined credits. Councilman Caesar, who has contributed no known plan for assisting downtown revitalization beyond opposing two-way streets, outsourcing Bicentennial projects to out of state mercenaries and enabling condos-for-the-wealthy-some-time-way-down-the-road, was able to blithely rationalize his contempt for the less well off by waving a mimeograph of the tax code.
Fiction is dead and buried in New Albany, because everyday life is so consistently entertaining ... and so enduringly futile in a political sense. Do any of these people have a better idea for how the Reisz Building might realistically be used any time soon? Is it that we just couldn't run the risk of poorer old people living that close to Mr. Bobo's champagne-sipping penthouse dwellers? Doesn't Sterling actually have the money to do what they propose, and some semblance of a track record that might hint at an ability to succeed in doing it? If the answer to the last two questions is yes, shouldn't we give them the parking garage, because that way, at least something might get built?
Legacy at Riverside not dead yet in New Albany; Mayor Gahan disappointed that low-income tax credits weren’t awarded for developments, by Braden Lammers (Hanson Compendium of Pop Ups and Roll Overs)
Councilman Kevin Zurschmiede voted in favor of that resolution while on the redevelopment commission, but sponsored the measure opposing the developments for the council.
“We did have support unanimously [from the redevelopment commission], and then to find out after the fact in the new year that we might not have support I guess we were a little confused and not sure what was going on,” (John VanMeeter director of development for The Sterling Group) said.
(Mayor Jeff Gahan) said the Legacy at Riverside “would have given a dilapidated city block $12 million worth of development. The seniors that would reside there could have visited our downtown restaurants and shops, and contributed to the local economy in a big way.”
The administration estimated the property tax base would have risen from about $10,000 to $40,000 annually on the lot due to the Legacy at Riverside project. However, Councilman Bob Caesar estimated the city would lose millions of dollars in property taxes over the life of the developments if they received credits when he voted in favor of the opposition resolution.
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Speaking of the riverfront, let's check the class warfare front. (March 4, 2012)
Pictured above is the rear of what New Albanians long have referred to as the Reisz Furniture Building, which has been vacant for as long as most of us can remember, apart from being used by Schmitt Furniture as storage. Recently a proposal has been advanced by a Mishawaka-based firm (Sterling) to restore this long-term eyesore and replace rapidly decaying structures adjacent to it with new buildings, all for the purpose of creating affordable senior housing.
Largely at the behest of members Kevin Zurschmiede (R) and Bob Caesar (PD - Pretend Democrat), New Albany's city council rushed forward a resolution opposing affordable housing tax credits for this project, and these credits subsequently were denied by the state agency.
A half-block to the west, a sign has been erected to tout the "proper" use of governmental incentives to private developers.
For the River View development to proceed, it must be the beneficiary of -- yes, you guessed it -- various governmental subsidies and incentives, without which the utterly cashless Mainland Properties cannot so much as turn one single spade of downtown dirt.
What's more, while Zurschmiede, Caesar and four other council persons took the opportunity of their vote to rail publicly against the very possibility that the Reisz plan might someday, far in the future, be modified to permit differing uses of dwelling spaces than those originally specified in order for construction to be incentivized, not one of them has yet indicated a similar level of internal disturbance with the fact that Mainland has completely changed the nature and intent of its River View project, from enabling downtown condo ownership and residency from the outset, to pushing its ownership society to the very end, with intervening phases of retail, office and (gasp) apartment rentals all to occur first, whether they're needed or not.
Neither Zurschmiede nor Caesar have commented publicly as to what they feel might be a better way to rehab the long neglected Reisz building than the Sterling proposal. Concurrently, they both seem to approve subsidies to build something on the part of a development group with absolutely no money, rather than to incentivize another development group with money enough to a least complete plans without its open palm garishly extended.
If class warfare does not explain these attitudes, then what does?
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Recalling how the human progress retardant helped keep the Reisz building dilapidated into 2013. (January 5, 2013)
Still wonderfully and delightfully decrepit, the old Reisz Furniture building and adjacent rotting structures greet the New Year. Remember last year, when there was a proposal afoot to rehab these spaces, and Councilman Bob Caesar took time from his busy schedule of Crutchfield-fluffing to sabotage it?
Looking for the best New Albany bicentennial legacy of all? Keep reading.
CeeSaw's in the news again as Redevelopment defies the CM's weighty IRS tome (August 15, 2012).
Meanwhile, the affordable seniors project involving the long dormant Reisz building -- you remember, the one Bob Caesar defeated by doing a dramatic council rain dance with an Internal Revenue tax concordance held aloft to catch rays of Mitt Romney's abstinent light -- made preliminary sense to Redevelopment, although without the presence of dual council/commission members who dashed away lest they learn something, and now can be expected to solemnly swear that they were cruelly the information they missed by leaving before the second act.
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Speaking of the riverfront, let's check the class warfare front (March 4, 2012).
Neither Zurschmiede nor Caesar have commented publicly as to what they feel might be a better way to rehab the long neglected Reisz building than the Sterling proposal. Concurrently, they both seem to approve subsidies to build something on the part of a development group with absolutely no money, rather than to incentivize another development group with money enough to a least complete plans without its open palm garishly extended.
If class warfare does not explain these attitudes, then what does?
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Shambolic NA: Big ticket jewelry and lower-income tax credits (February 25, 2012).
As the excerpts here illustrate, rental housing owner Kevin Zurschmiede voted both ways while wearing different hats, putting him into position to tie King Larry's all-time flip-flop record by abstaining the next time it comes up ... and the developer did not fail to notice it. The administration took no public position until after the state declined credits. Councilman Caesar, who has contributed no known plan for assisting downtown revitalization beyond opposing two-way streets, outsourcing Bicentennial projects to out of state mercenaries and enabling condos-for-the-wealthy-some-time-way-down-the-road, was able to blithely rationalize his contempt for the less well off by waving a mimeograph of the tax code.
