Editor Marv Adams useful column “Development is due south” evokes certain thoughts and reactions.
Adams: “HDC [Housing Development Corp.] is part of a group …that will tackle the 100 block of South Queen Street….. Behind facades on the west side of the street there’s drug-dealing, prostitution and people crammed into 64 apartments in 10 old houses…The plan is to raise $15 million for what will be called South Square.”
“The project was hatched by the Lancaster Alliance, a group of business people intent on improving Lancaster.”
WATCHDOG: “Improving Lancaster”? In fact, the group reflects the will of the regional oligarchs rather than small, shares responsibility for bringing the convention center, and is the force behind the proposal to return streetcars to clog city streets.
Adams: “The block is just south of the convention center.”
WATCHDOG: The first block of Queen south of Penn Square is devoid of pedestrian traffic due to the presence of the Lancaster Newspapers on the west side and the usually idle convention center on the east. This is a barrier to the natural spreading of gentrification southward.
So what is proposed for $15 million in tax payer funds, subsidies and guarantees would have taken place through private investment had the Watt & Shand site been developed as mixed use residential / retail functions and had a smaller convention center been built at the now closed Brunswick Hotel in the now moribund Lancaster Square.
Adams: “Some $11 million is covered. Find $4 million more and this project goes forward by 2011. If not, the dream ends, the money already spent is gone and the properties return to the owners. That would be a crime.”
WATCHDOG: Talk about “crimes”! Don’t build the convention center and there would be ample state and local funds for this project, also to have renovated and enlarged the Lancaster Public Library, and further to have enabled the Art Museum to realize it’s move…with tens of millions left over.
This is doing things the expensive and the hard way. But there may be no other choice but to support the project.
But then what happens with the next block, and the next block, and the next block! Once the natural direction of gentrification was thwarted, there is no going back. Growl!
Once again, marvelous Marv [Adams] is nothing more than a shill for ‘the elite’ who desperately want to have the face of downtown Lancaster return to the lily white of the 40’s and 50’s. This was the driving reason behind the CC and will be driving reason behind streetcars.
Both venture will drive Lancaster City and/or the County into bankruptcy. The elite have protected their assets and their ass, and have dumped the consequences on the common taxpayer.