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| YASM - in all its unique and captivating beauty |
Start with the laudatory stance some (an apparent majority) on the city council of Minneapolis are taking on the question of having a referendum as part of an orderly large scale public works investment. Strib reporting here (having a referendum); also, here (legislative reciprocity on sops for the uber-rich).
Now this, Ramsey wise, summer of 2005:
I recall our current mayor belly-aching recently over how debt service on that Norman Castle [it was a James Norman pet project] costs one and a half million dollars a year in debt service and it's a fixed budget cost getting in the way of his honor's Grover Norquisting all over us these days. That thing, the Norman Castle, was trumpeted to be the "catalyst" of the entire Town Center, build it and the tax base will stupendously grow as if manna were to be falling from heaven. An anchor and a catalyst, called by one present council member the thing that would kickstart the momentum of Town Center prosperity (that from the perspective of having chaired a thing called the "Town Center Task Force").
Yes, those in the groundbreaking photo can be roundly criticized for having done such an inadvisable thing, on hope alone but with the market not yet having tanked back then in 2005 - with the sharpest criticism being for the hubris of plunging on without putting the massive public works investment - proportional for a small town such as Ramsey to the billion dollar Zygi boondoggle - without any thought of having a citizen referendum.
It was hubris, it was stupid and it failed. Now we have the same strategy - throw money at it - in a punked-out market, i.e., tout again the "catalyst" story, but this time without that figleaf of a booming maket as before, to cover for current City push-on-a-string decision making.
If decisons were bad back then, Town Center being a cash sink, they are as bad or worse now. Same cash sink. But a rebranded CORpse, tarted up some and then touted catalytically, in a largely different market.
With a new "catalyst" catalysis will flow as if manna were to be falling from heavan, we are now told, from the new catalyst, that being Flaherty-Collins' resplendent rental by the rails. So, what's the real likelihood that the FC subsidized-parking "public-private partnership" (P3) thing will kickstart the momentum of anything now, despite the reassurance song we are again hearing sung from the council dias? Also -
Why get into all this? YASM is why.
If wondering, YASM is an acronym for yet-another-strip-mall, the concept the current folks have inserted as a new vision in place of the vision of a unique planned walkable community. Fact is, with Maple Grove near we don't need a plastic clone-YASM clone-Maple Grove thing, in Ramsey, and we've little to no basis for an assurance it will happen, or if happening, it will boom Our Town into Nirvana, as some think - or at least publicly allege.
That said, in November's election the question may be whether waiting and working on the older vision is better than YASM; with YASM being in its most offensive form via staff and council members, along with Darren, trundling regularly to Las Vegas to be part of a convention of YASM folks, from their nationwide haunts, so that the locals can court the YASM professional deal-makers the way a fat river fish courts an eagle.
How it was, is, and will be. The Norman Castle, what it is and how it was enacted will be used to bias the discussion of what's the best future course for Ramsey and its unfortunately failed Town Center - money sinkhole. It will be that way in ramping up to the November vote.
Where the issue should be simply one vision against the other, (and debate over waiting vs. costs of proactivism in the present realty market), the looming mistake of how the Norman Castle was politically engineered into being by James Norman, in his unparalleled secretive and closed manner ought not to distract from the question of what's best as a future course - the "where we go from here" issue (which clearly must include debate over the Landform-Ramsey alliance and whether it remains an ongoing thing).
We will see one mistake set being less market-justifiable than the other, but more egregious; the non-referendum imposition of the ever draining Norman Castle debt service cost being the egregious one (made in apparent boom times without any benefit of hindsight); vs the successor "strategy" of trend-fighting hubris by pushing on a rope when the trend clearly is not your friend when taking that approach.
Remember, you read of it first in Crabgrass. How the election will play out locally. And a hint of past players probably reactivating an interest in how things currently are, and how in a bad situation things might best be managed next year and next decade.
There will be discussion: Whose past bad judgments have been worse. Whose plan, hope and vision for the future might be best.
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| YASM - Shazam! (photo from here) |
As a rhetorical question, what at Town Center since Summer 2005 has been built absent spending large amounts of public money? There are Deal's deals, the VA, Allina. And --- six million spent to buy still vacant land.