Presuming the Ramsey City Council did not go into the decision blindly to settle with the foreclosing banking consortium to buy the part of Town Center under foreclosure, the Council (and the city administration in current market reality decision making mode), have to realize that flexibility in what happens next, if anything, at the distressed site is paramount.
Ramsey, however, is but one locale that Met Council touches and affects deeply.
And Met Council has already put a checkmark behind Town Center, their way and the Highway [as in buying up land with RALF funds - land along Hwy 10 that is a good or bad purchasing idea independent of the political attachments of the actual consultants working on it, and independent of the separate but neighboring question of the need for adaptation within the confines of city-owned failed Town Center venturings (for which Met Council in its earlier pre-Bell incarnations served as both sparkplug, and overly avid pom-pom squad).
Where this post is going - getting to the point - if to mop-up the mess now affecting Town Center it becomes beneficial to have less than planned levels of dense shared-wall housing at the site, and that is the only way it can be rehabilitated and made to work, with more amenities, more commercial use and perhaps even light industrial or other business uses in lieu of dense low-demand housing; if that proves to be the case, will the 800 pound gorilla with seven-county jurisdiction admit it and assist, or will there be foot dragging to impede and to intransigently demand?
Terry Hendriksen, from his time on council, analogized dealing with Met Council as arm wrestling with a ratchet.
It is always, we got that yesterday, here's what you have to do our way today, and our expectations and projections for your folks tomorrow. Please, either like it or love it; we're flexible in allowing you those two choices.
But if you resist and suggest better ways, the ratchet clicks only one way, never to give back or slack off but to always look to pick up one or two more clicks against you, here, there, but never going the other way. A ratchet that works only one way, only Met Council's way.
Will they stay true to form, and stand in the way of adaptive effort to make something like a silk purse out of their pushed-for sow's ear; or will they be something more accommodating and less intransigent against any thinking that would suggest having lesser amounts of bad dense housing on site (and consequently fewer flushes that Met Council could gain assessment income from so that their bonding debt service can be accommodated as a transcendent goal above local control and local adaptive flexibility in the face of realities)?
In effect the question is: Who are we dealing with? And how intransigent will they be?
And will they ever pubicly admit they throw their weight around as much as they do?
The fiction of working WITH local government is the fig leaf facade they put in front of working WITH anyone going their way; and AGAINST anyone having better ideas [refusing the thought that there might even be such a thing as "better than Met Council thinking"].
Something I call the Uberplanner mentality. We are the planning staff and we're okay.
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It will be very interesting to see (if alternatives arise), whether Met Council allows them if in Ramsey's best interest but possibly involving scaling down amounts of housing from that written into past Ramsey plans for Town Center; and if an amendment to the Ramsey Comp Plan needing Met Council's blessing for implementation is ever suggested that way. Whether they will be flexible and amenable to such possible change even if contrary to past check marks, on forms, in the filing cabinets, at Met Council headquarters. Whether the big seven-county boss-bureau has that capability, or not. Especially given that it was their "smart growth" Mondale-era mantra and bias that put Ramsey into the box it's in, will they remain not smart, and inflexible and unaccomodating instead.
