yesterday, but I haven't seen it engaged here. I think my post
provides a quite defensible alternative perspective, if you review it.
Here's what I **urge** people to remember (please read and consider
CAREFULLY)...
This project is already far stronger *because* there was a community
review. We need to make PROGRESS in making these projects more
accountable to citizens. In fact, there was yet another community
process I haven't even discussed to select the developers from a public
request for proposals. Sometimes, the only way forward is INCREMENTAL.
I share all the concerns Caty raised. I was also deeply immersed in
the project, had way more information that I can possibly relate here,
and using that I had to make judgments about what was and was not
possible, under all the constraints we were working. I think we went a
long way toward making progress on making the kinds of decisions made
at City Hall more accountable to the community. On some level, because
of all the information we bring to bear on the decision, I must ask
that you trust the decisions that we made.
Here's my concern: when we gave a $2 million grant a year ago to
renovate the Lowry Condos (across St. Peter from the St. Paul Hotel),
nobody batted an eye. Nobody raised issues about affordability that I
recall. But there was no community involvement through a review panel
for that project, and the project had no relation to any larger
community planning process. There was no threat the building was going
to be torn down. I could go on, but you get the idea. We want the
openness of this process to be its finest asset, not its largest
failing.
If we are going to shift the paradigm here, AND I DEARLY WANT TO, I
think when the City makes a good effort toward openness and
accountability, we need to ask not whether we had all our own
priorities met, but whether the PRESENCE OF A COMMUNITY PROCESS
IMPROVED THE PROJECT, and whether we are making REASONABLE STEPS TO
MAKE THESE DECISIONS MORE ACCOUNTABLE.
Change doesn't happen overnight, and from the perspective of someone
immersed in the minutiae of several these decisions downtown for the
last five years, rest assured, this was BIG TIME PROGRESS!
I want this process to be emulated again, and I think you do to. That
is the thought I leave you with to ponder carefully,