That proposal drew the same withering criticism that greeted the Safe Harbors plan. At the BAK meeting, where she presented a revamped plan, Reeder said the residential aspect was just one part of a very vague “wish list” — one she did not believe was feasible.
“The Queens Galley is not in the business of being a landlord or running a shelter,” said Reeder. “As far as moving everybody from Washington Manor, that was never the plan.”
Reeder added the King’s Inn site was just one of several potential locations and that the entire plan was still in a largely conceptual stage.
As for Piazza, he said without the existing infrastructure, he did not believe he, or anybody else, would be able to create a profitable, tax-generating business on the site in the near future.
“We really didn’t want the mayor to tear that building down, because now it’s just another empty lot,” said Piazza. “And in my opinion it will be an empty lot for at least the next three or four years.”
We could turn the property into a beautiful Japanese Tea Garden, much like the one located in San Francisco; tourists would love it; and the UPAC crowd would simply adore it! How’z about it?
Our city planners should take a look at what was done in Schenectady. They turned a dilapidated piece of State Street downtown by Proctors Theater into a nice boulevard type streetscape with a movie theater, restaurants and bars, all as a companion piece to Protors. We could do the same thing here, with UPAC as the centerpiece. Our town just needs to think a little bit and use common sense. Bring in things that people want and that can be useful and bring in money.
That work was actually done, a design by architect Andrade… it included shops, traffic calming, lighting… it hung on the wall at BAK for 5 years… was published in kingstoncorridor.com: http://kingstoncorridor.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/broadway-theatre-square/
This would seem to be the reason?
“He had a conceptual thing,” said Salzmann. “But the city had to do a considerable amount of work to work to determine if the buildings were capable of doing what he wanted to do.”
OK. So what is “considerable”, how much does it cost, how long will it take. Or just this much: how much work would it take just to provide as estimate? How much work would it take just to do an estimate, due diligence.
But here’s a thing too: why wouldn’t Mike reach out to the citizens for support? Why wouldn’t he put his plan out to the public? That’s easy enough to do, Mike has huge connections to people in the city, a large email list… “Here’s my proposal: what do you think”…
With the exit of Sottile we can hope for new department heads. We certainly shouldn’t have to wait until they retire or come under suspicion of wrong doing.