The mayor held a press conference to announce a revised parking plan for the proposed new Events Center, if located at the Arena/Convention Center site.
The press release states:
"The plan meets the additional parking needs for the proposed Events Center as well as improves parking for McCart Park ball field activities and more. It minimizes the impact to the actual ball diamonds, as only one ball diamond at McCart Park will be utilized for parking purposes."
The new proposed parking will take one of the softball fields and provide an additional 300 spaces. The map of the proposed parking solution also shows a private parking lot with a building on it that I believe is the Moose Lodge. I understand that the Moose Lodge tried to sell their property to the city and the city wasn't interested in the past. I was also told that the Moose Lodge doesn't like the softball people parking in their lot. So why would they want Event Center goers to park in their lot? Maybe they will close the lot off and charge exorbitant fees to event center goers.
It is pure doublespeak by the mayor to say that he is solving the McCart field parking problem and yet he is going to pay for it with Event Center project money. He didn't care about the softball community playing at McCart Field until he was faced with opposition to his plan to take 5 softball fields for his EC parking lot. The Mayor is now on record saying McCart needs softball parking regardless of the Event Center outcome,
It's manipulative of him to announce this idea right before the Monday night city council vote on which location to support. He does it with the appearance of "it's a done deal, I want it and this is where it is going." I would imagine he thinks this action might sway one or two of those four council people who favor the downtown location and intend to vote that way Monday night. I hope they are stronger and smarter than to fall for his games.
The mayor is using the softball kids as pawns in his event center agenda.
Why not buy the Moose Lodge and keep All the McCart fields?
ReplyDelete@1:52 Well for starters, any land the City "invests" in out there won't appreciate per the Ethics Board ruling.
ReplyDeleteIf this new parking plan is such a good idea why didn't the consultants he threw money at (hired) come up with it before now.
ReplyDeleteIt's also very bothersome that they pushed these spots even further away. The Football Games and Marching Band Competitions use the Parking Lot that the Events Center is placed on. People are now going to be limited to the parking next to Howard Wood Field and southeast of the CC complex. Let's not add that McCart fields are almost always in use, and the Convention Center and Arena are in use too during the summer/fall times. It's just Mass Chaos.
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