Council member moves to trot out May Town Center dog once again

CM Lonell Matthews seems bound and determined to resurrect May Town Center in spite of his inability to get enough votes from Planning Commissioners to lead to planning approval. When we last left the proposal to sprawl a second Downtown across agricultural greenfields, it was in disarray and recommended for disapproval to the Metro Council. The Planning Commission's breathtaking action forced a super majority rather than a simple majority of council members to approve MTC.

Nonetheless, CM Matthews intends to move the proposal to council public hearing in March, where it will likely incur the unrelenting backlash of large numbers of civic leaders who consistently turn out whenever it appears on an agenda. Even a local blogger supportive of untrammeled growth questions the wisdom of Matthews' move:

The timing is curious, the subject is still slightly toxic and if the Councilman and May family are not careful, the backlash could be significant. Why? Simple, the Metro Council has just approved the financing package to build a brand new downtown convention center at a cost of $650 million and quite a few citizens are still mystified by this expenditure. Many still believe that taxpayers will be left ultimately holding the bag for a significant portion of the project’s construction and operating costs. Skepticism runs rampant and to be honest, the project’s organizers did not help themselves by allowing several publically embarrassing mistakes to be made during the planning process.

We do not know what cards CM Matthews has up his sleeve. However, if things remain as they were 8 months ago, I don't see how the MTC proposal can come out of a public hearing unscathed enough to give it a realistic shot. However, I don't put anything past this council.