Redevelopment welcomes Josh Staten as its new director. So does this mean Duggins is 4-ever NAHA? Let's follow the money.

"Just stick it over there, where
that nasty historic building used to be." 

Jeeebus, what a week.

Just for the fun of it, let's take a glance at a couple of items from the March 13 minutes of the Redevelopment Commission.

New Albany City Hall hasn't blasted a propaganda blurb in a whole month, and it strikes me as strange that the hiring of Josh Staten as redevelopment director hasn't been the subject of one of the usual PR puff pieces.

Maybe it's because City Hall isn't interested in answering the natural follow-up question: If David Duggins has departed redevelopment permanently (this crowd is on its feet), then does this mean his "interim" status at the helm of NAHA's bulldozer fleet also has evaporated?

Or, will someone else be hired?

If so, how's the job search going, Irving Joshua?

I'm so old I can remember when Duggins told me he just couldn't earn enough money in government as opposed to the private sector, and that he was stooping to mere farthings solely out of a deep and abiding faith -- in Dear Leader.

Now Duggins is a 125K-per annum lifer -- but don't worry, Mike Hall; the News and Tribune won't ever think to ask, and if it does, just threaten to pull all those ads.

Hanson will shut up, fast.

As an aside, last night Mark reminded me of another one of those glorious episodes of "truthful dialogue" that Pat McLaughlin mentioned in his doomed resolution of censure. Duggins still was redevelopment's handsome matinee idol, and he was being questioned (I think) by former 5th district councilwoman Diane Benedetti.

Benedetti asked Duggins about the then-rumor that sewer tap-in waivers were being awarded Flaherty and Collins, filthy rich developer of the Breakwater apartments. Duggins replied that yes, the topic had come up, but it remained purely optional.

Subsequently it was shown that in fact, the waivers already had been approved prior to Benedetti's question and Duggins' "truthful dialogue." 

Prompting this recollection was David Barksdale's report about redevelopment activities, as given at Monday evening's city council meeting. He gleefully teased us with tidings of a hotel to come somewhere in New Albany.

A quick glance at the Dora Hospitality portfolio reveals a dreadful collection of plasticized cookie-cutter hotel brands best suited to suburban interchanges. It isn't much in keeping with historic preservation, and now I'm terrified that more tap-in waivers will be distributed like Halloween candy to developers from afar.

Of course, maybe Josh Staten intends to be a different kind of Gahanite campaign finance conduit.

We shall see.

(This post has been updated to include this postscript and web site link to HMI, or Hospitality Marketers International, the company chosen by the Redevelopment Commission to conduct a hotel market study, as recommended to the commission by the hotel group and a realtor -- not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that. Thank you, CA.)

Airbnb in Nawbany: To tax or not to tax?

My Main Street neighbor Josh Pavey and councilman Al Knable provide talking points in the video, which you can view by following the link.

If the deity is to be thanked for small favors, here's one: Bob Caesar does not appear.

Since no one asked me, I'll offer this hint to those in favor of regulating and taxing Airbnb properties: You do not want Bob Caesar as your spokesman.

You're welcome and can buy me a beer some day.

New Albany officials weighing pros and cons of Airbnb regulations, by Chris Sutter (WDRB 41)

NEW ALBANY, Ind. (WDRB)-- Josh Pavey's grandmother just got done with a big facelift to her classic home on New Albany's mansion row.

"She just recently repainted the entire outside of her house, redid the facade, the woodwork," he said.

She's been able to do it because of the extra money she's bringing in after opening her doors to visitors. Her home is an Airbnb.

"It's been a huge asset to her," Pavey said about his grandmother.

She's part of a growing trend in New Albany. A new spot in the southern Indiana city seems to pop up on Airbnb.com daily. The winds of change don't go unnoticed by lawmakers. Talk is beginning about how to properly regulate the new businesses.

"I'd like for there to be discussion from the public, public input, about what they want their neighborhoods to look like," said City Councilman Al Knable.

He's decided to get the conversation started.

"Lots of entertainment" as Deaf Gahan shovels mud, demolishes public housing and fellates multinational hotel conglomerates.

You really have to wonder who (or what) writes these headlines at WDRB.

New Albany to fix traffic on State Street, invest $30 million into Daisy Lane extension, by Jessica Bard (WDRB)

New Albany mayor announces plans to turn hillside into sites for restaurants, hotels, office building.

The Daisy Lane and State Street intersection is some of the most high-profile land in New Albany because of how close it is to I-64 and I-265.

The News and Tribune's reporter helpfully clarifies.

Grady's story is here. I'm still waiting for that "professional courtesy" comp, Bill.

In my perfect dreamworld, a former public housing resident eventually becomes mayor, overseeing the demolition of Summit Springs owing to perpetual toxic erosion.  She charges the estate of the Kelleys for the hazardous waste clean-up, and invites an elderly Jeff Gahan to the ceremony.

Mike Hall shows up instead, and encourages all in attendance to attend Gahan's concert series with the Jimmy Buffet cover band.

On hotels and being a "hotel citizen."

The industrial hotel has been an economic triumph. But over the years its uniformity has made it an emotional failure.
-- The Economist ("A short history of hotels: Be my guest")

Substitute the word "beer" for "hotel," any grasp my life the past quarter-century.

During which I've done my fair share of traveling, and to me, the entirety of hotels (or hostels, or Airbnb) comes down to an affordable place to sleep.

Consequently, I've tended to worry less about ambiance; when traveling in civilized places possessing public transport (read: Europe), location means less, too. You can always get there from somewhere.

Obviously, there is more to it.

The “Romance” of Travel, by André Naffis-Sahely (The Paris Review)

Joseph Roth’s hotel years.

“I am a hotel citizen,” Joseph Roth declared in one of the newspaper dispatches anthologized in The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe Between the Wars, “a hotel patriot.” It’s easy to see why: Red Joseph was nothing if not a cosmopolitan humanist, and the hotel was his natural habitat. “The guests come from all over the world,” he explains:

Continents and seas, islands, peninsulas and ships, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists are all represented in this hotel. The cashier adds, subtracts, counts and cheats in many languages, and changes every currency. Freed from the constriction of patriotism, from the blinkers of national feeling, slightly on holiday from the rigidity of love of land, people seem to come together here and at least appear to be what they should always be: children of the world.

"All the streets seem to be one way around the hotel making it awkward to get in and out."

In his New Albany Downtown Street Network Proposal, Jeff Speck writes:

The current one-way configuration provides the advantage of allowing drivers to ride a wave of green lights through downtown and to take left turns unimpeded by oncoming traffic. It provides the disadvantages of increasing danger to pedestrians and cyclists, undermining retail viability, lengthening trips, and confusing visitors. 

The latter ("confusing visitors") is not first on the list of reasons to ditch our counter-productive one-way streets. However, as these comments on ratings aggregators illustrate, visitors feel the pain, too. Thanks to B for these quotes.

First, at Yelp.

This hotel met all the needs my husband and I had on a long weekend to Louisville. Very close to highway, a little confusing area because of all the one way streets but we managed -- Holiday Inn Express (now Best Western Plus) review

Then at Trip Advisor.

BTW watch out for all of the one way streets in this little town. All the streets seem to be one way around the hotel making it awkward to get in and out. This is just something to know about the area. We ended up going the wrong way while trying to get back into the back parking lot and when we came out the next day, waited while someone else tried to get off of one way going the wrong way onto another one way still going the wrong way. I think the signs are not very prominent and the on off ramps are also awkward -- BEST WESTERN PLUS West I-64 review