My old nemesis! Started out to write one thing, ran into Firefox slowness due to cookie overload, and had to clear up that before proceeding -- and ran out of time.
It was a fairly moot rant anyway; the deal is all but done and downtown will be losing more parking -- in an expansion of facilities at the Fieldhouse intended to draw more people to downtown! They say the project will include a plaza "bigger than Rockefeller Square." You know what Manhattan has that Indianapolis doesn't? An effective, extensively interconnected and widely-used public transit system!
The city's part of the deal will be paid for with an extension of the "innkeeper's tax," a few more pennies on the dollars that pay for hotel rooms. 'Cos what're visitors going to do if room rates go up, use some online service that presently doesn't pay that tax...? Oh, that's right, they might just do that. Better yet, local news sources are claiming "it won;t cost taxpayers a dime;" taxpayers who vote in Marion County, that is.
They'll get their plaza -- with ice-skating in the winter, just like we used to have at the Soldiers and Sailors monument. And I'm sure it will be a great triumph, just like the Union Station revamping into chic shops and the Circle Center Mall -- the one now an occasionally rented-out venue and the other fading like last decade's newspaper.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
3 comments:
I keep wondering how they expect to get people to come downtown, what with the constant loss of parking and loss of driving lanes on main streets thanks to the ill-begotten Red Line project.
The thing that irritates me about the Red Line is that it's nowhere near me, but once I get downtown, it crosses right into my path down Capitol Avenue. I'm not going to drive over to Broad Ripple, park (probably in a pay lot), and take the bus downtown, so I'm going to have to deal with the loss of ANOTHER lane on Capitol (bike lane already made things bad; this will make them worse).
Eventually you just know the plan is to ban automobiles from the Mile Square entirely.
Fuzzy Curmudgeon,
"loss of driving lanes on main streets thanks to the ill-begotten Red Line project."
If the loss of a single driving lane out of all the many dozens leading downtown is going to stop you from driving down there, you probably weren't going to go anyway. That's a nonsensical objection one step short of yelling at clouds.
Nothing wrong with a tourist tax and no reason not to call it what it is; if their presence doesn't benefit the locals (and not just the "venue" itself) more than the inconvenience it causes, let 'em stay away.
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