Quote:
Originally Posted by kornbread
And that in a nutshell describes why San Antonio doesn't get downtown development like other cities. There are a lot of property owners who are wanna-be developers, but don't have the means to get anything done. And when they do try, you end up with an abandoned building on an abandoned street.
I'm leary of anything managed by the city in any way? They try to please everyone and do everything cheap. The city manager has her hands full just trying to bring the city into the 21st century.
Insider deals? Why do you think River North was presented in the first place? There's potential along the expanded river walk. Everyone has known about this. Certain people already had plans for the area, but wouldn't it be better with the tif? I can just see the insider-ness...
"Let's call it something snappy! Like... Uptown!"
"Not original..."
"SA Uptown? S'uptown?"
"Supper town!!"
"Dammit Big Lou, we'll eat after the meeting!"
"..NorthTown..."
"....<cricket sounds>...."
"Make the dam copies and get us coffee KW, no more ideas."
"What about Pearl Land?"
"Sit down Kit!"
"How about North River?"
"I thought you were supposed to be creative AA?"
"River North?"
"Good enough Yoda, let's go eat...Seriously Lou, you fat sweaty bastard, you're giving this city a bad name."
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I'll give you credit for the second part being funny. But the first part is factually incorrect.
The only thing Sculley will "manage" is the implementation of the master plan. Private owners/developers will still control individual sites/projects.
And we don't have "wanna-be" developers; we have cautious developers because the costs and complexity of building urban projects is staggering.
The Geiss project was a failure because Geiss stopped paying his contractor. And Cross & Co. are ready to re-start construction as soon as Geiss runs out of litigation options.