Skirting the True Issue
I was thinking about that miserable skirt, not to mention the forgettable wearer, last night.
The evening was a tribute to the art of disproportionate rhetoric.
Listening to hours of abstract Inside Baseball-type jargon from the dais was disappointing because the members of the City Council kept missing the point, I thought.
Background
City Hall decided last year it wanted a mixed-use project built in the parking lot of the U.S. Post Office at the corner of Culver and Duquesne.
Been a parking lot for the last 60 years, it turns out.
The multi-dimensional architectural firm chosen to build it is a prestigious one that has an impressive project record and won three major awards in recent months.
The deal was done for $147 a square foot, $2.5 million.
Not Quite Clean
It happens that the parking lot is more on the order of my first wife, not exactly beautiful but not exactly homely. That is to say, the parking lot is on the lip of Downtown, not officially part of Downtown but no one with a straight face could call it residential, either.
That very imprecision caused certain members of the Council to start a trash fire or was it a fire to trash the developer?
Except for Vice Mayor Carol Gross, who wanted to approve the project and go home, I never had the feeling the other four Councilmen had a strong grasp of the circumstance.
All Are Grownups
The party of the first part, City Hall, is savvy in the ways of finance and negotiation. As for the party of the second part, Judit Meda Fekete and Joseph Miller, they are high-powered. Rubes they arent. Never were.
City Hall knew that because of the unique placement of 9900 Culver, the developer would need what some called considerations to pass through the approval process.
Those so-called considerations struck like a lightning bolt last night.
A Big Deal?
I saw only surprised faces when it became apparent that City Hall and the developer seemed to have reached a premarital understanding.
So what?
The pre-nup, as they call it, was perfectly legal, ethical, moral.
By accounts given so far, no one snookered anyone. Each side knew exactly what the other was doing and what was expected of it.
Do I Have News for You?
Until last night when the wheels came off as members of the Council opened wide, brought one hand up to their mouths and kept saying over and over,
My golly. Gee whillikers whiz. This is awful. This is terrible. Golly gee, how will we ever extricate ourselves?
News of a pre-nup swirled into Council Chambers with the subtlety of a four-barreled hurricane.
I kept checking stage left to see who would enter wearing oversized bib overalls and straw hat with a stick of straw between his teeth.
Who Knew? City Hall Did
Ms. Gross was exactly right when she said, witheringly,
We made the sale knowing what the developer was planning.
The pre-nup was not a bulletin. The record has been gathering dust for a year.
Yet the body of the rhetoric seemed to concentrate on remote technicalities. The bigger picture kept eluding them. On a scale of seriousness, much of the elaborate posturing was equivalent to a two-ant invasion of your home.
It Didnt Just Happen
Last year, the same five persons signed off on the deal. So why the surprise?
As the Councils dialogue tiptoed toward the cliff, I forgot about the miserable blue skirt. Instead, I recalled the neighbor lady who deplored the onset of a world-class traffic jam every afternoon in front of her property.
Just a Nudge
Advocating a bicycle route through Downtown, she spoke like someone partial to strongarm tactics.
Said she didnt care how many parking spaces would be knocked out by inserting a bike route through Downtown.
There should be a way to force people out of their cars, even if they dont want to quit them, she suggested. Then people should be channeled into the wonderful world of cycling.
Oh, now I remember why I left the Democratic Party.
