Monday, June 22, 2009

Interrupting the Echo Chamber

I took it upon myself to challenge May Town developer David Koellein's claims to be an informational resource when he actually acts like a spin doctor:
[Quoting Koellein from the City Paper]:
The real disaster would be the pitiful alternate future of Bells Bend: the economically meaningless, far more environmentally damaging and character obliterating subdivision of duplexes for which the site is already zoned.
[My response] This is entirely misleading statement and not just because it reduces Bells Bend alternative future to a disaster.

It is misleading because building a subdivision of duplexes involves obliterating the very same natural obstacles to high volume transportation that the May Town Center project relies on. In short, nobody is going to build duplexes without bridges. And the same group of opponents bolstered by others who currently support May Town would organize to fight smaller duplexification of the Bend (And I won't even go into the hurdles by state and federal archeaologists when and if ancient burial grounds are surveyed along the Cleece's ferry shoreline).

But your commentary is also misinformation in the sense that many of the people who would be trying to build duplexes across Bells Bend are the land holders currently in league under Bells Landing LLC. Are we supposed to view your comment as a veiled threat by your associates? Two of those associates, Frank and Leon May, are attempting to leverage a decision by the Planning Commission on Thursday to exclude duplexes from the Ensworth Place block that their own homes sit on now. Why couldn't the May Family commit to work for similar zoning that prohibits duplexes in the Bells Bend context? If it's good enough for their homes, why isn't enough for the Scottsboro/Bells Bend homes?

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