^Fantastic piece that will go down in the history books if Lot J turns into an anchor around the city's neck.
Just some killer commentary on this thing from all perspectives in the last week from Monroe, Mark Woods, and even Gene Frenette.
Sincerely hope that everyone who appreciates what the Times-Union has done here in the last year is paying attention to the newsroom cuts and voting with their wallets to support quality local journalism.
You can usually tell how close to home it hits by counting how many times the coverage comes up during these City Council and DIA meetings.
On today's meeting, it's hilarious to me that the end result of kicking this thing to the DIA is a deal coming back to Council that's actually WORSE for the city than the deal that was on the table two weeks ago.
The project has quietly shrunken by 15% across almost all components, while the city's contribution has remained exactly the same.
Was fully expecting some small concessions from the Jags in terms of infrastructure or a slight reduction in the breadbox loan, but they held their ground on the major line items, and Mark Lamping repeated his "we're not starting over" bit again for the back row.
A couple things were revealed:
1) The office space will, per Lamping, be primarily occupied by the Jags or their affiliates (Iguana was mentioned, and I've heard that Bold Events will likely expand into the new space as well). The DIA was concerned that the office could cannibalize other office tenants from elsewhere downtown, but seemed entirely unconcerned that taxpayers would be paying half to build out new office space for the folks who were already being given $200 million+ in cash.
2) As Ennis noted above, the developer claims that Lot J will drive up to 3 million additional visitor to the sports complex each year. For context, that's more people than Wrigley Field drew in 2019, and about 75% of Sea World's annual attendance. Thank God for the clown cars, as Lot J is about 8,000 daily parking spots too light to handle that type of a surge. By my math, if these numbers are correct, visitors cannot expect a roughly 19 hour wait to be seated at one of the restaurants.
The whole thing felt like a big charade where the DIA was clearly being forced into something against their will, essentially being asked to greenlight a project without the necessary information to make such a decision. They openly admitted that they had no fucking clue whether the breadbox loan was a good idea or a bad idea.
The giant elephant in the room was the revisions the DIA made mid-day yesterday to soften their recommendations.
Good-faith suggestions from people like Oliver Bakarat were almost unanimously shut down.
Lamping was cranky, red-faced, and more smug than usual.
The DIA at one point was in a loop where they were actively voting to remove their own recommendations.
Drink every time someone gives a new ROI calculation for the project. Drink every time Mark Lamping references the "magic of compounding interest." Drink every time someone says the world "transformational." Drink every time 50 units are lopped off the residential component. Drink every time someone is dismissed from the podium, returns to their seat, and is immediately called back to the podium. Drink every time Matt Carlucci gets caught on an open mic discussing his Thankgiving turkey.
And the whole time, you've got poor Zed Smith from Cordish - clearly a brilliant guy, and for my money, one of the most professional, well-spoken, rational human beings of these proceedings over the last few weeks - sitting there with a polite smile on his face but this look in his eyes like "what have I gotten myself into." But he just keeps smiling, and answering questions about the Eastside, and minority-business involvement, while all around him, numerous local government bodies are infighting, trying to figure out their own rules of operation, and repeatedly referencing him as "Jed."
I'm kinda ready for this thing to be over one way or the other.
And I still think the vote falls somewhere between 14-5 and 16-3.
Whole thing has really demonstrated how badly we need to hit the reset button as a city though.
