If you’ve driven downtown during the past month or so, you know that a lot’s going on. We can gripe about the road construction, but there’s a certain satisfaction to the bumps and dust and slow traffic: stuff is happening downtown.
Which brings up the obvious question: What’s happening with Parcel 5?
My assumption is that Arnie Rothschild and RBTL, and their partner in the Parcel 5 proposal, Morgan Communities, are close to wrapping up their final designs, cost estimates, and revenue projections.
If Mayor Lovely Warren and her staff are satisfied with that information, Warren will ask City Council to sell the land to RBTL and Morgan. And then City Council will vote on her request. Between now and then, those of us who care about downtown, the city, and the arts will be letting the mayor and City Council know what we want on Parcel 5.
At the moment, I’m conflicted. There are a number of reasons to be concerned about the RBTL-Morgan proposal. Two of them:
- Where’s the money for the theater? Warren turned down developer Andy Gallina’s proposal for a mixed-used building on Parcel 5, apparently because she didn’t feel the funding was solid enough. And yet RBTL’s funding consisted of a pledge for $25 million from Paychex founder Tom Golisano and some ideas of how to raise the rest. If Warren is going to ask City Council to approve the theater, seems like RBTL’s financial plan will need to be very, very solid.
- The theater’s impact on other local arts organizations. RBTL brings in a lot of touring Broadway shows. Several local theaters also stage musicals. Geva’s recent production of “In the Heights,” for example, was particularly successful. Geva and others worry that a fancy new theater and the shows that RBTL would stage in it could compete with them for audiences, membership, and other support – this at a time when all arts groups are facing financial pressure.
It’s not a given that RBTL would hurt other arts groups. Geva’s “In the Heights” did extremely well despite the fact that RBTL has staged that show in the past. Maybe a new theater for RBTL would increase public interest in live theater of all kinds. The problem is, we haven’t assessed the potential impact, and some arts organizations are very worried. The RBTL proposal has created a lot of animosity, and that’s not good for RBTL or for downtown Development.
That said, the RBTL proposal has some definite plusses. At a recent briefing for members of the Rochester Downtown Development Corporation, Warren talked about something that should resonate even with some of RBTL’s strongest critics: A new theater, she said, will “increase life after 5 in downtown Rochester.”
(The RDDC briefings are considered off-the-record talks, but I have Warren’s permission to pass on what she said.)
Warren talked about the importance of increasing the number of people who come downtown year-round – not just for a couple of big festivals in the early summer and early fall.
She talked about the potential for having additional people walking the streets downtown before and after a play, going to nearby restaurants or bars. And yes, people will do that.
“You need boots on the ground for people to know that something’s happening downtown,” she said.
Warren emphasized a key principle of good urban planning: if you increase the number of people walking around downtown, you increase people’s comfort level. You erode the perception that downtown isn’t safe – “not just because we have a police station across the street,” she said, “but because people are walking the streets having a good time.”
I’ll keep sharing my thoughts and concerns about the Parcel 5 issue as we wait for the next stage in the city’s decision. But for the moment, Warren’s “life after 5” argument seems a good foundation for the “pro” side of the argument.
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2017.
Again, what is the plan for the Rochester Metro? We can be whatever we want, so why are the community “leaders” so unwilling to forge a vision of our region that we all can rally around. Why do we have small potatoes discussion about this one theatre instead of, “is one new theatre enough?”
I realize that there are some things happening behind the scene, but can’t we get a feel good campaign going in our area to boost everyone’s spirit and positive vibes for our region.
We’ve got good bones
We’ve got a rich past
The future is up to us
Why in the world would we want anything less?
Someday I’d love to see a civic “improvement” project in Rochester whose business case didn’t boil down to; if we build it, they will come.
Frontier Field was expected to bring people to the neighborhood. Ask the businesses in that neighborhood if it helped. My guess is it didn’t. The suburban folks who come downtown for entertainment park as close as they can to the venue and leave as soon as they can. They don’t walk around at night in the city.
Obviously, we all want “life after 5” for the city, but I’m wondering what the professional urban planners are saying? Does this project really have a chance of fueling an enthusiasm for central-city lifestyles that’s already underway? Right now it’s just a hope and a promise.
We’re listening to sales pitches that aren’t answering specifics. Isn’t the theater too large? Why is there an onsite restaurant and retail spaces if the intention is to get people walking around for these complementary amenities? This project seems risky, and it’s troubling that Mayor Lovely Warren’s attitude is one of overconfidence.
I recall Bill Johnson and CATS, with the unquestioning assistance of the local media, claiming that the ferry would run 360 days a year, make four trips a day, carry 1,000,000 passengers on the first year of operation, and bring in $92,000,000 to the local economy. How’d that work out guys?
There are financial ramifications from such a decision. If everything goes according to projections, all the people can sit around a campfire and sing folk songs. But what if things do not go according to the sales pitch, like happened with the fast ferry, Frontier Field, and even the Geva loan. What would be the financial hit to e city, if any? You never see any discussion about that.
The demographics of theRBTL attendees is also a mystery. Are they mostly older suburbanites, who are very unlikely todo a ealkabutafter the show, or young , urban singles that are then looking foursome thing todo. It matters because it is the city, not the country, that is making financial commitments.
Without optimism, what do we really have?
Where would we be now without optimism?
We have way more than our fair share of pessimists in Rochester.
What a terrible way to go through life.
What’s in your glass? Is it half empty or half full?
If we can conceive it and believe it we can achieve it.
Johnny – To paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s quote about marriage…… Optimism about a project in Rochester is the triumph of imagination over intelligence and the triumph of hope over experience.
To Reid: I would say Oscar Wilde was correct.
Henry Ford said “whether you think you can do something or think you cant, both answers are correct.”
Have you ever heard of Earl Nightingale’s the Strangest Secret? We become what we think.
Napoleon said “imagination rules the world”
I don’t know how old you are, but all the things that are normal today were in Sci-fi movies and cartoons when I was a kid.
So in my mind anyway, yes, if they build it they WILL come.