Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, Bill lays out a clear, concise call on the whole issue from his perspective.
What do you think?
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About Christopher Cocca
Christopher Cocca is a Pennsylvania-based writer and community organizer. His fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Brevity, elimae, Pindeldyboz, Geez Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, Generate, and elsewhere. He earned a Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School in 2005 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing (fiction) from The New School in 2011. He helps lead the Air Quality Partnership of Lehigh Valley - Berks and is the Associate for Urban Mission at FPC Allentown. Opinions expressed on-line are solely his. Quotation does not equal endorsement, except for when it does.
I think Bill is right. The goofy way the legislation was designed and introduced have caused the bulk of the problems. Folks were in far too much of a hurry.
But he misses the broader point. Rebuilding downtown is a policy question, and good policy takes into account costs and benefits, historical experience, and desired endstates. Everyone assumes that an arena will be “good” for Allentown, but in fact historical experience suggests that arenas do little for small and medium sized cities. What makes Allentown’s case worse is that 1) the project takes away city revenue for one small project and 2) they are building an arena that is twice as expensive as similar projects elsewhere. This means that anything other than immediate and dramatic success could completely destroy Allentown’s finances.
There is absolutely nothing empirical about this project, which I think should concern us all.
Posted by GDub | June 24, 2012, 4:43 am