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Tuesday’s interminable CHA meeting
12/03/2008 6:18 PM by John M
I had to bail on last night’s special CHA meeting before anything of interest really happened. Crime is down, the new budget was approved like 47-1 even with dues increasing, and then there was a presentation on multi-modal transportation. What did I miss?
I kid, a little… There was the presentation about the proposed development along the Boulevard and in Shockoe Bottom. It seems like there are more diverse attitudes in the community about the proposed development this time around, but I really did have to leave before the presentation was finished and before any discussion. I can only imagine how that might’ve gone…
In a related note, I’ve been promised a copy of the presentation from the meeting for posting tomorrow.
I stuck it out for the whole thing and the overall impression I left with was that there are basically two schools of thought: 1) “We already said, “No!” to a ballpark in the Bottom and you’re wasting our time and money with this.” 2)”This is a very different proposal which needs to be evaluated on its own merits.”
Many, many, many, MANY times the audience interrupted the presentations, at one point ignoring the speaker to yell at each other.
Each of the speakers (after John left) promised to provide their presentations to the CHA for presentation on their website.
I won’t speak to the actual design proposal and its pros and cons (I would urge everyone to review the presentations and come up with their own opinions), but it does seem to me that this developer has, at least, acknowledged all the complaints about the previous plan and, in most cases, proposed a method of mitigating them.
#1:
“Many, many, many, MANY times the audience interrupted the presentations, at one point ignoring the speaker to yell at each other.”
Wasn’t able to make it to the meeting, but the President, or whoever was moderating this meeting mustn’t have been doing a very good job.
As for the “interminable” part, again, the moderator should have moved things along and had a set time limit for each presentation along with an end time for the meeting.
To me, that’s the main job of the President. To keep the meetings orderly and have the meetings go no longer than an hour and a half.
sounds like there may be a cure for insomnia afoot. let me guess, the developer wants the public to foot the bill. how hard is it to draw a nice picture of a baseball stadium anyway.
Take a moment to look through the presentation (PDF), look for the slide “Table of Values – Shockoe Center”.
The breakdown for the Shockoe development is $310 million private investment, $53 million public. The public money is described as “Mostly federal and state transit grants to GRTC; minimal City matching funds.”
The $422 million Boulevard project asks for no public money and says that “The City’s costs will largely consist of relocating existing City departmental facilities on the site and the Arthur Ashe Jr. Center.”
When would taxpayers start paying the $53 million, now or two years down the road?
I would like to see the numbers and actual breakdown on this instead of general descriptions:
“Mostly federal and state transit grants to GRTC; minimal City matching funds.â€
Liberty, I agree with Mikes earlier post in asking that you read the proposal before making your judgments. The are not asking for the public to ‘foot the bill’ and the ball park is, as they described it, ” 1/6th of the project as it is 1/6th of the funding.”
The money is broken down in the proposal. The public money would be for infrastructure improvements, e.g. updating or moving sewer, water, electric, etc; and the remainder of the funds are designated as federal and state for the GRTC portion of the project. The funds for infrastructure would likely be expended at the beginning of the project; the GRTC funding I am not sure about the timing.
I couldn’t find a clear answer to this in the presentation; but, it seemed that part of the Shockoe plan is the GRTC transfer station at Main St. Station. Does anyone know if this is the case?
What is the bill the public is expected to pay and over what time period? We should look at this the same as hiring a contractor to renovate our home…there is a contract spelling out the amount we will pay and when and exactly what we will receive for our money. We don’t want another Art Center fiasco.
From what was said at the SBNA meeting, it is part of the plan but the details are still being worked out by GRTC. They have a number of different scenarios GRTC is evaluating with the train shed acting as the transportation center.