Thursday, September 16, 2010

Heads, You Lose; Tails, You Still Lose

As the local newspaperish published thing points out, the city of Indianapolis have been violating its own ordinance for nearly a decade, operating (oh, horrors) gravel parking lots on the gaping, vacant gap where Market Square Arena* once stood. Cos, y'know, laws are for peons like you, me and the guy who owns a parking lot, not Our Rulers. Right?

Oh, they say they'd've liked to do something different; but the first big condo development for the site went to vapor when the developers couldn't pre-sell enough units and the next two, wellll, the city just wasn't sure they'd work out -- so they backed out of the deal.

What's next? Why, an end to hypocrisy! They'll pave those lots! Right here in River City! --On your tab, of course, at a projected cost of up to $800,000.00 American, which means at least a million bucks by the time the three shells have stopped moving. City officials say they'll pay it all back from what the lots earn -- except they're planning to lease out the whole city parking thing.

Wanna bet the city paving the lots where MSA used to sprout was a condition of the deal?

Here's a tip, UniGov: "privatization" and "creating a commercial monopoly" are not the same thing.
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* A/K/A the Lugar Family Revenue Enhancement Building -- or so I'm told.

5 comments:

perlhaqr said...

What's wrong with gravel parking lots?

And why can't they make whoever they're leasing the land to pave it?

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

What I could never understand was how the city could tear down the Market Square garages and not immediately replace them, and indeed talk about privatizing a prime piece of property right next door to the center of local government.

For years that was where you parked if you had to go to the CC building. I spent a lot of money parking in that garage over the years on trips to get building permits...not to mention when Sal and I went to get our marriage license :)

The gravel parking lots are pretty terrible, perlhaqr -- especially when it rains and snows. At least if we pave them maybe the snowplows will be able to clear them off.

The deal is probably as Bobbi says, the city probably has to pave them as a condition of the lease. Seems dumb to me but this town does a lot of dumb things; just look at the deal they cut on Lucas Oil Stadium where Jim Irsay gets almost every dollar that gets spent there, football-related or not...

Drang said...

At least your city government doesn't believe in not having any parking, so as to coerce the hoi polloi into using mass tranit, instead of those nassssty, evil automobilessssss, we hates them, my preciousssss.

perlhaqr said...

Ah. That's probably the difference, then, I live in Albuquerque. :)

Roberta X said...

Yeah, one of the things about gravel roads and lots in the winter is, you're shoving a lot of gravel around -- or, in the case of snowblowers, throwing a lot of gravel.