He's melting: If the newspapers won't ask David Duggins hard questions, maybe a bucket of water is the answer.

In these two articles by the News and Tribune's Danielle Grady, there are so many questions to be asked, and so few questions actually asked.

Are they ever asked? I really want to know. If I can think of these questions (and others) while reading, then ...

Industrial development growing in New Albany

FireKing Security Group to be first tenant in Industrial Park West

... David Duggins, New Albany’s director of economic development and redevelopment, said that three years isn’t that long of a time to search for a tenant — a good one, at least.

Is there any evidence for this assertion, or perhaps a corresponding example?

Did the city show property to five potential tenants in three years out of taste and discernment, or because its development hand is so exceedingly weak?

The Carlisle Family was attracted to the Industrial Park partly because of the tax abatements the city offered them. They city approved one abatement for the $6.5 million the Carlisle Family is investing into its new building, while also approving a tax abatement for the $2.2 million worth of manufacturing and IT equipment FireKing is investing into the new location.

Lots and lots of boilerplate tax abatements. The city is adept at giving away money to bigger companies. What sort of programs exist to "assist" smaller start-ups?

“We think that once FireKing gets built up, it’ll really help spur more development because if you don’t know it’s there, you really don’t know it’s there,” he said.

Was that Duggins speaking, or the late Yogi Berra?

Finally, how does the headline "industrial development growing" jibe with the article's conclusion: "Grant Line Industrial Park West might be one of the last frontiers for industry in the city. New Albany is almost out of industrial space, said Duggins."

Let's move on to a second collection of unchallenged smoke-blowing, this time on site at The Break Wind Lofts at Duggins Flats ... and waiter, may I have another plaque?

With cream on top?

The Breakwater apartment complex in New Albany starts accepting tenants

First building opens in mid-December

... The city of New Albany has been happy with how The Breakwater has been coming along — especially regarding the types of tenants it is attracting.

“We want people to live in downtown that are excited to be in downtown,” said David Duggins, New Albany’s director of economic development and redevelopment.

And the apartment complex just looks nice, Duggins said.

“When you go out there, it’s cool, and I think that’s hard to accomplish sometimes,” he said.

So many questions.

How cool are the sewer tap-in waivers and other public subsidies enabling a private for-profit enterprise to be given its special leg-up?

Given these subsidies, isn't the city also subsidizing future retail occupants of the old Coyle building, these being subsidies unavailable to other small business owners?

Duggins has denied two-way streets ever came up during these subsidy negotiations, but at least one Flaherty Collins employee has indicated otherwise.

Which is it? Because if this did in fact arise, and if assurances were made by the city to this effect, then every subsequent protest of "two-way streets aren't a done deal" was a lie (yeah, Irv -- you can use that).

But wait -- it's cool, dude.

After all, Duggins isn't so much a director of economic development as a style arbiter. He's Gianni Versace, reincarnated, and Jeff Gahan believes it.

If that doesn't terrify you, nothing will.

What city is this, anyway?

If "the industrial park is about job creation," then what are indie local businesses -- chopped liver?

I'll lead with the link, and then tie the knot.

Commentary: To Tout Good Jobs, Visit Main Street, Not Amazon, by Jeff Milchen (at Bloomberg Businessweek)

 ... While politicians always gravitate toward a photo op at a business that promises loads of new jobs, the sustainable creation of good jobs almost always occurs incrementally. The actions that help nurture real, lasting job creation rarely make headlines.

It seems that every politician masters the statistics about small business being the engine of job creation, but delivers the goods to corporations that wield significant political power.

Following the Jeff Speck presentation last Thursday, and amid a broader-ranging chat, I mentioned to David Duggins, New Albany's director of economic development and redevelopment, that local independent business owners earnestly question the disproportionate time and money spent on incentivizing the city's industrial parks, given the ongoing absence of an economic development plan downtown.

Duggins insisted there is an economic development plan downtown, although the only tangible plank he could identify on short notice was the declining Urban Enterprise Association's zone programs, and he defended disproportionate industrial park efforts with this statement (paraphrased but accurate):

"But the industrial park is about job creation."

I had no idea that the 20+ guys and gals now working at Bank Street Brewhouse, which was an empty building prior to our investing close to $1 million in it, apparently exist somewhere off an "official" job creation grid. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear the crash, is there a sound? If a tree falls downtown and there is no economic development appointee there to hear it ...

Duggins's logic mirrors that of One Southern Indiana, to which we, as a city, outsourced numerous economic development tasks long ago, primarily so that 1Si can add another layer of coddling to the traditional model of incentivizing the larger corporate entities -- like Amazon and others at the River Ridge industrial park, itself a large measure of pretext for the Ohio River Bridges Project, which stands to actively harm local independent businesses in Southern Indiana, presumably owing to what we're now told is our inability to create jobs, or at least the right type of jobs.

And yet, with almost no outside assistance, local independent business owners have invested millions in downtown New Albany and ... that's right: Created jobs.

We've also spent quite some time making a very public case that for us, as indies driving revitalization with our time and checkbooks, a rational street grid (two-way streets, traffic calming, complete streets and walkability) is tantamount to economic development. It is a program that can only be facilitated by the city, but has the virtue of being something the city can do to help everyone, not just one or two businesses in piecemeal fashion.

The reply?

Nary a city official chose to read Jeff Speck's book until it was known that he'd be speaking here last week, and by his own admission, David Duggins still has not (although the mayor did). Also, Duggins recently hired a helper, Tonya Fischer, whose job it will be to coordinate business development in New Albany. Previously she worked as 1Si's appointee to the Bridges Coalition; presumably, now she'll assist us in making sense of the carnage inflicted by the bridges project. It may even make sense.

My point in all this is simple.

Until there is something, we must assume there is nothing.

"We're not against it" is not the same as "we're for it."

Until you do something, you have done nothing.

Capeesh?

From industrial park coddling to New Economy Week.

According to the 'Bune and 'Bamagator newspaper, "Grant Line Industrial Park West is 'substantially complete' and the city is in the process of forming a marketing plan to attract businesses to the 40-acre site."

What follows is a lengthy explanation by the city's economic development director as to the eternal importance of fluffing the city-owned industrial parks through the usual abatements, inducements, enticements and smoky back room negotiations. This is good to know. If nothing else, it shows that the city concedes the usefulness of improving infrastructure when it comes to the sort of "good jobs" companies forming the basis of many decades of the same ol' economic development strategy.

By the way, has anyone seen a commensurate, detailed economic development plan to assist a revitalizing downtown? The sort embracing infrastructure improvements (i.e., the city-owned street grid) as a means of supporting the downtown revival?

No?

In my world, this constitutes a major problem.

What about yours?

On Facebook, Bluegill pointed this way:

"Luckily, more and more people are taking it upon themselves to shift the paradigm and the 'leaders', their antiquated party system, and the old rearguard, anachronistic squad on the whole are slowly becoming less relevant. They're not dying pretty and no one expected them to."

Here's his link:

Nobel Prize? Meet the Economic Movement That Really Deserves Praise

This week, the Nobel Prize for economics may have gone to three academics, but the real work of fixing our local economies was happening on the ground—as part of New Economy Week.

by Laura Flanders in YES! Magazine (linked at Common Dreams)

The winners of the so-called Nobel Prize for economics were announced this week, and what a peculiar pick: The three who will share the award this year sit on two diametrically opposed sides of their field’s most critical debate ...

 ... The same week that the pseudo-Nobels were announced, we saw a nationwide celebration of regular people diving into economics. This week was New Economy Week.