How many businesses along University Avenue have been driven out of existence by the Central Corridor light rail contraction?
Hard to say – nobody involved in this boondoggle seems to be publicizing the counts.
But enough that someone’s trying to help people scavenge the space:
Starlings are birds that rest their tired wings in pre-existing nests, taking advantage of readily available real estate to make their temporary homes. Perhaps the same strategy can help some landlords along the Central Corridor fill their empty storefronts, at least until a more permanent tenant comes along.
Cute name. But I think the only birds that are going to benefit from this disaster will be seagulls – scavengers that pick off the waste others leave behind.
Or Caribou. Which isn’t a bird – it’s a big hoofed mammal – but it’s also a coffee shop that will enjoy lots of cheap rent in abandoned storefronts, in which to serve coffee to the condo-dwellers – the few that don’t drive everywhere, and also exist.
But I digress:
On Tuesday, two graduate students launched a new volunteer-driven effort to connect University Avenue property owners with artists, entrepreneurs and community groups looking for short-term offices, galleries or event space at bargain rents.
The Starling Project focuses on “meanwhile spaces,” according to co-founder Ben Shardlow, with the intention of filling empty storefronts with evidence of creative enterprises.
OK – it’s not a dumb idea, per se. Eventually the market will fill the vacant space – it’s a big metro, still. And those people and businesses in turn will…
…well, either languish in the arid parking-free no-mans-lands between the big stops, or get priced out of the market by the Caribous and Patagonias and McDonalds and Dunn Brothers that can afford the newly-gentrified rents at the intersections that the Met Council has selected to be the “winners”.
Which, in turn, will be someone else’s grad school thesis.
This reminds me of when I was living in Detroit in ’89-90. They were trying to attract visitors/conventions to the downtown area and of course Detroit’s downtown area inspired the Talking Heads “Life During Wartime” (I think). The mayor-for-life, Coleman Young, got a grant to renovate the area. In his wisdom they decided to clean and paint only the sides of the abandoned buildings that visitors could see from the (very few) People Mover, downtown Detroits overhead monorail. The rest of the area looked like hell and given the crack pandemic of the time, literally was hell, but there were nice shiny building fronts, sides or backs to throw off the rubes/about to be victims of crime riding the People Mover. Good Times. Good to see St Paul following in Detroits foot steps.
I’m still wondering how much it would cost to just put everything back like it was and cancel this massive boondoggle? Whatever it is, I’ll wager it would be cheaper in the long run than finishing this wasteful extravagance.
Every Winter we get a flock of Starlings for a few days. Amazing birds. They’re quite large, but very striking. I like them.
Rents are cheap on University because the buildings are old and crappy. Formerly, they were filled with Mom-and-Pop restaurants and retail taking advantage of cheap rent in old, crappy buildings, which kept prices down and offered entry-level entrepreneurs a stepping stone to business success.
Now we’re replacing family businesses with temporary government-supported artists, government-subsizided start-ups, and government-funded community groups. And that’s supposed to be an improvement?
. . . abandoned buildings that visitors could see from the (very few) People Mover, downtown Detroits overhead monorail.
And this didn’t SUPERCHARGE THE LOCAL ECONOMY!!
The politicians lied?!
And I was so sure that the light rail that they are building on Oahu was going to come in on time, under budget, and ridership would exceed the city council’s wildest dreams.
‘Cuz they need more tourists on Oahu.
What they did on Oahu was forecast incredibly heavy ridership(30 runs perhour! With almost four hundred pasengers per run!), then X’d out the restrooms at the stations. No one believes the stations won’t end up having restrooms, but it would have made the estimated costs soar if they included them in the plans.
The Honolulu train will cost a minimum of 3.7 billion $. That’s about $3000 for every man, woman, and child living on the island. Oops! New estimates are closer to 5 billion in build costs, on top of 50 million a year — above what is taken in in fares — for operating costs.
Some wags have noted that the rail will be shut down in an emergency (earthquake, tsunami, zero’s headed towards ford Island . . .) leaving its riders stranded at the worst possible time. It is paid for with a 1/2 cent increase in the Honolulu sales tax, and the bastards have already tried to raid that fund.
Wall street bankers got nothin’ on the shyster lawyers that get into politics.
That’s funny, Terry. I could have sworn that I read somewhere that the Hawaiian version was supposed to be named the Big Dig II! 😉