There will be a dog-pony show groundbreaking soon. Besides the recent rail stop. Flaherty is to be expected. Perhaps Collins may come also for the pomp and pagentry, PACT school students to sing in honor of Town Center, it's status, its magnificence.
To Rain on expectations, metaphorically, Strib reports:
An end to America's exurbia? For first time, city, urban growth outpaces that of outer suburbs
HOPE YEN , Associated Press - April 5, 2012
WASHINGTON - Stung by high gasoline costs, outlying suburbs that sprouted in the heady 2000s are now seeing their growth fizzle to historic lows, halting American city dwellers' decades-long exodus to sprawling homes in distant towns.
[...] Construction of gleaming new schools and mega-malls built in anticipation of a continued population boom is cutting back. Spacious McMansions offering the promise of homeownership to middle-class families sit abandoned or half-built. Once an escape from urban problems, suburban regions hit by foreclosures are posting bigger jumps in poverty than cities.
The result: The annual rate of growth in American cities and surrounding urban areas has now surpassed that of exurbs for the first time in at least 20 years, spanning the modern era of sprawling suburban development.
"The heyday of exurbs may well be behind us," Yale University economist Robert J. Shiller said. Shiller, co-creator of a Standard & Poor's housing index, is perhaps best known for identifying the risks of a U.S. housing bubble before it actually burst in 2006-2007. Examining the current market, Shiller believes America is now at a turning point, shifting away from faraway suburbs in the long term amid persistently high gasoline prices.
Demographic changes also play a role: They include young singles increasingly delaying marriage and childbirth and thus more apt to rent and a graying population that in its golden years may prefer closer-in, walkable urban centers.
"Suburban housing prices may not recover in our lifetime," Shiller said, calling the development of suburbs since 1950 "unusual" and enabled only by the rise of the automobile and the nation's highway system. "With the bursting of the bubble, we may be discovering the pleasures of the city and the advantages of renting, investing our money not in a single house but in a diversified portfolio."
The signs of longer-term bust are evident in places such as Kendall County, Ill., an outlying suburb of 116,000 people located about 50 miles southwest of Chicago. The nation's No. 1 fastest-growing county from 2000 to 2010, Kendall was part of an exurban wave that more than doubled Kendall's population and helped lift GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush to victory in 2004, offering Republicans the hope of a new era of conservative voters sprouting on the rural-urban edge.
By the late 2000s, however, Kendall County's growth began to wane amid recession and rising gasoline costs. [...]
Put on rose-colored glasses, and say "rail friendly, and renting" but then, why the free garage subsidy if not for gas-guzzlers?
Renting, but "may prefer closer-in, walkable urban centers" is in that reporting, as is, "we may be discovering the pleasures of the city and the advantages of renting, investing our money not in a single house but in a diversified portfolio." Yes it does say advantages of renting, but only after pleasures of the city as a lead attraction.
While clearly facts [happening after the next election because of Flaherty-foot dragging] may prove me right or wrong, I have always been a skeptic of saying we can plop density dead square in the middle of Kurak's cornfield and it will be a population magnet as if it were in a vibrant culturally active city hub, as with Fhaherty's downtown Indianapolis adventuring.
Ramsey Town Center -vs- walking distance to a university campus, an urban downtown, a professional football stadium and a basketball stadium within walking distance - as with Flaherty's Cosmopolitan by the Canal in its urban Indiana setting. That scenario differs somewhat from walk-to-the-RV-dealer on Ramsey's Highway 10 attractiveness. Yes walk to look at RVs, but drive to the library miles away by the high school, the real one.
It is convenient for the politicians that no chickens will be home to roost by election time, what with the glitz and glamor of groundbreakings, [or is it less?] happening conveniently before the election. Happening now, in fact, with the irrestible alure of the photo-op and video opportunity for local politicians full of themselves to spin dreams and promises of success, manna from heaven, etc.
But that spinning now comes with nothing factual and substantial, except public spending, to rely upon by election time on whether the Flaherty stuff has any real likelihood of renting out. Or "catalyzing" jack.
That proof on the ground will not happen until after you and I have voted, based in part on what we are being told and in part what we, ourselves, infer and believe.
Mr. Lazan and Mr. McGlone and their paired optimism certainly may be proven correct. However, in light of Town Center history and current reporting of nationwide trends, do you really think so?
Remember, they are the ones gambling with public money that it cannot fail. Flaherty at least is taking some risk. McGlone only risks being voted out, which is a ho-hum thing. Lazan risks that time may cut off his regular monthly money payments, but in the interim it is the public purse that is being put at risk. Taxpayer money, well into the future what with free bonding to bankroll Flaherty in his risk taking, is being gambled by the politicians while they actually have no real skin in the game whatsoever.