Looking around a city whose leadership wants to be the ones who took a city on life support and made it a Class-A city without seeming to have an actual plan grabbing for whatever bauble is put before them as the answer to what will put the Lucem back in Lucem Diffundo, and are, therefore, ripe for accepting that, for the price of a city, they can all be Nigerian Princes.
The problem is the plans they have come up with so far, a casino, an aquarium, some other thongs that fell through, so the desperation to have something to show has to come about ee if that meansthose people liveing here are o be ignored and removed, their ideas of what ould make to city better being ignored iperferring what consultants have created in iter places sometime with he eventual reaction of a city odelled after dying malls that at one point were the answers for evry problem at the time.
New Bedford, once great, could build on and add to its historical importance but, A small group of property owners have partnered with an out of state consulting firm to form a Business Improvement District, an area within which property owners pay an additional tax or fee in order to fund services and improvements within that district’s boundaries. It might sound attractive that property and safety will be improved, but the actual property owners could be anyone anywhere who might only be interested in their investment in things they will never see just for the dividends, not the local small business owners, artists, or residents who would enhance and improve areas that are part of the city, not completely remove what is there that makes the area special.
Imagine if the people in the South End around the Orpheum had been consulted, not ignored, by the state and federal out of town and out of state people who left us with such other great improvements to the fill quality of live like the Central Artery but could have left water Street a functioning mercantile area.
Although it might start as a small area with its own flavor with the history of the secrecy around who is buying property and unhousing the locals to make room for people not guaranteed to come, most assuredly the planners will not stop when one, what should be called a “phase” from the get-go is completed and put an abutting area to same and the obvious contrast demanding some work. We already had the secret planning of the State Pier supposedly for the benefit of the city designed by a group of the “usual businessmen” which was only announced after the fact apparently assuming it would be accepted as a done deal until it actually wasn’t by a city with people in it who want to and should be allowed to improve their city. An unknown business incestuous group of businessmen had decided for the city what the pier would look like and the businesses and ambience, the whole look, the theme, if you will would fit with one planners restaurant plan fitting in just nicely. The need for imitation would in all likelihood spread the plan, design, and determine property usage throughout the city so, instead of being one with character, the city becomes yet another product of the cookie cutter approach that has too many seaside cities looking the same with mostly shiny class hotels, casinos, and other activities for those from elsewhere with their needs met by he underpaid locals who render the required services.
Such zones gain control over the development of properties, the management of branding, setting a district’s and, eventually, the city’s identity, and the overall marketing of downtown.
How long before the consultants come in and do to New Bedford what they did for Salem when all the outside companies came in to make money, downplayed the horrors of the actual Witch Trials, and trivialized it all with a statue of Samantha Stevens of Bewitched in a prominent location and not Giles Cory.
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