“The major economic-development success story in our community this year involves $3,000 worth of Adirondack chairs.”

While New Albany pursues its Reaganonomics Platz, Buffalo is busy figuring it out.

Esmonde's column is shared in its entirety, as he may as well have been sipping a craft beer at an outdoor table in our downtown when he wrote it.

Giving the people what they want on waterfront, by Donn Esmonde, BuffaloNews.com.

Of course, it’s working. It worked everywhere else. There’s no secret recipe or special formula. We have sun, sky and—most importantly— water. Just add a snack shack, put out some brightly colored Adirondack chairs, set up a kids’ space, mix in activities. All of a sudden, we have a down-town waterfront that people want to go to.

Just like a lot of people thought we would, once we got past our magic-bullet fixation. There’s no need to overthink it. To oversubsidize it. To overbuild it.

“It’s ironic,” said Mark Goldman, the activist/entrepreneur whose brainstorm last year changed the waterfront course. “The major economic-development success story in our community this year involves $3,000 worth of Adirondack chairs.”

Monday afternoon, more than 100 people walked or lounged at Erie Canal Harbor. A warm breeze ruffled a line of colored banners. Boats glided by on the Buffalo River. Folks lined up for sandwiches and ice cream at Clinton’s Dish—named for the governor who, at this site in 1825, opened the canal that transformed America. (Maybe someday we’ll get a sign that commemorates the fact.)

It has been nearly a year since Bass Pro, after years of arrested development, mercifully cut bait. It has been eight months since the landmark gathering at City Honors School, when Fred Kent of the Project for Public Spaces outlined a “lighter, quicker, cheaper” philosophy of waterfront development. The event, organized by Goldman, underlined what progressives had pleaded for years: Get over the heavy-subsidy, magic-bullet, lots-of-parking fixation. Instead, create a place where people want to go, and let human nature—and market forces— take over. Step-by-smaller-step.

Call this the Summer of Sensibility. The snack stand and mini-“beach” and Adirondack chairs and kids’ space and random activities—from yoga to Zumba classes—were spawned in focus groups and in public forums. The Erie Canal Harbor board, bereft of a plan after Bass Pro’s bailout, followed the people’s lead. Citizens committees—one includes Goldman, preservationist Tim Tielman and Buffalo Rising’s Newell Nussbaumer —guided the board’s hand. Finally, we’re getting the waterfront we deserve.

Lynn Skulski was sitting in an orange Adirondack chair Monday, watching the river flow. She left Buffalo for Florida eight years ago.

“I’m impressed,” said Skulski, who was in town visiting relatives. “Look at all the people walking around, on a weekday. Water is a big attraction. You don’t have to overcommercialize it.”

The Canal Harbor board’s plan, four years ago, was to build Bass Pro on this site. Instead of a public waterfront and Thursday night concert crowds, there nearly was a big-box retailer surrounded by parking ramps. Community blow-back, thankfully, killed the idea.

“You can build a store anywhere,” Skulski noted. “Why would you want to stick it by the water, and take up this space? It goes against the whole point of a waterfront.”

Amen. Granted, nobody is yet printing money at Erie Canal Harbor. But, at little cost and with a lot of imagination, we’re creating a downtown waterfront where people want to be. Where people go, commerce will follow.

“This is creating demand,” Goldman said, “instead of using massive subsidies to create supply, and hoping that the demand follows.

“It is not just people having picnics, it is good economic-development strategy,” Goldman added. “You start small, and it snowballs. By next summer, you’ll see private businesses lining up to come down—instead of asking for big, fat subsidies.”

Lighter, quicker, cheaper. Already, it’s working.

Holiday reading: Tax history as fashioned by wingnuts.

Turns out that there was time for relaxation after the painting was through. An article by David Sirota (recommended by Randy Smith) was good enough ...

The Tax History Conservatives Want Us to Forget

... but within the comments section there was a link to something even better:

Feast of the Wingnuts: How economic crackpots devoured American politics, by Jonathan Chait, The New Republic (September 10, 2007).

Follow the link for the whole piece, which is too lengthy to reprint in its entirety.

Like most crank doctrines, supplyside economics has at its core a central insight that does have a ring of plausibility. The government can't simply raise tax rates as high as it wants without some adverse consequences. And there have been periods in American history when, nearly any contemporary economist would agree, top tax rates were too high, such as the several decades after World War II. And there are justifiable conservative arguments to be made on behalf of reducing tax rates and government spending. But what sets the supply-siders apart from sensible economists is their sheer monomania. You could plausibly argue that, say, Reagan's tax cuts contributed around the margins to the economic growth of the 1980s. But the supply-siders believe that, if it were not for Reagan's tax cuts, the economic malaise of the late '70s would have continued indefinitely. They believe that economic history is a function of tax rates--they insisted that Bill Clinton's upper-bracket tax hike must cause a recession (whoops), and they believe that the present economy is a boom not merely enhanced but brought about by the Bush tax cuts.