Good WHAM piece on Ren Square
WHAM had a very good piece last night on Ren Square last night. It hit a lot of the key points about the performing arts center component. The performing arts center will be paid for with private money. The county won’t say how much they’ve raised. They say that if they don’t raise enough, they’ll just strip it down.
And here’s the scary thing: they’re planning on going ahead with the bus station and MCC campus later this fall and will worry about the arts center later.
Sounds like a rush job. Sounds like there will be no performing arts center.
But you probably all knew that already.
Update: What scares me is not that the bus station and arts center won’t be built at the same time, it’s the overall vagueness with which the only project is being discussed. I don’t think anyone should believe politicians who say “just trust me on this” after what we’ve seen the last six years.
I think it’s a more sensible project without grafting the arts center onto the bus station… The question is do they need to build a new bus station on that corner? Or would maybe the already vacant land north of Mortimer St. be a better location? What about an intermodal station?
With or without the Performing Arts Center….Renaissance Square makes absolutely no economic or financial sense. If the county goes forward without the Performing Arts Center…it will create among the highest concentration of poor people…individuals with very little disposable income…on the most prominent corner of Downtown Rochester! Does this makes sense? A urban junior college campus and people who utilize the bus station will generate a super high level of pedestrian traffic of poor people! …and the community is willing to spend $200 million for such an entity. And they call this “economic development”?
I see no need for another downtown junior college campus. We already have one at the Sibley’s complex. The new center will be exactly the same size and number of students as the current Damon Center. The County has to kick in $30 million for a new duplicate facility…that will move the Damon center about 300 feet to the west! What is economic point?
The community must realize that Renaissance Square makes absolutely no economic sense…and it should be terminated ASAP.
if you read the transcript of the interview you’ll see there are a LOT of “we dont know” “we cant say” type answers. how can they not know how much that thing will cost from year to year? have they been doing research? at least theyre on the record now as saying they wont dump the costs on the people…
It is not like we haven’t discussed this before. Reread this post from June.
This WHAM piece was very good about illustrating the “damn the funding full speed ahead” aspect of the project. That’s something we haven’t touched on so much before.
I wanted to link to our old post, but it didn’t turn up when I searched. I think I spelled Renaissance wrong.
Yes, the WHAM piece is very good. The sarcasism in my comment was directed at those who are indeed preparing to run full speed into the wall.
I’m glad our local media is catching on. Now, if only our local government would do something. Pull the plug.
After 4 years we still don’t know who owns it or where the money is coming from, Hell Per WHAM the final design isn’t set. All this are simply stepping stones enroute to hitting the wall.
So why are we doing this again?
What’s depressing is the dysfunction of the whole planning/discussion process. Couldn’t they reach some kind of consensus on what the project will involve before the digging starts? I wish I could say that this was unique to this area, but the Atlanatic Yards fiasco in New York City was along the same lines.
It’s frustrating that there is little or not community input into decisions that will impact the community greatly. I thought this was supposed to be a democracy.
I saw the wrecking ball on Mortimer Street and the dismantling of old downtown buildings. Another upstate city gets Dresden-ized for the sake of urban renewal. Funny, the folks behind this project are suburbanites. The neat thing about Dresden is that the Germans rebuilt it into a beautiful city. Think upstate New Yorkers are capable of doing the same? Not. This project is a money grab. Like the proponents really want our culture to change direction towards car-free, mass transit lifestyles. Ya, Right.
[...] of Ren Square contrasts nicely with Syracuse News10Now’s shameless anti-Maffei piece.ÂÂ Last week, WHAM reporter Evan Dawson asked a lot of tough questions about Ren Square…and got no real [...]
[...] have heroes. They are the members of our local media who asked tough questions about the project. Reporters at Channel 13 and the City paper took the lead on this front, but more recently, even the milquetoasts at the [...]