JeffDowntown
Senior Member
- Joined
- May 28, 2007
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A dose of development reality is needed here.The problem is that it hasn't been studied enough, or that traffic isn't taken into account, it's that ultimately a major stakeholder, Everett residents, are largely unsatisfied with the proposal. So long as that remains true it's probably not happening. Planning is an inclusive process, and as much as it's frustrating sometimes, you can't just decree that a stadium will go somewhere, this is a democracy.
The solution here isn't to study, it's to imagine new possibilities for the area beyond a stadium and make designs that account for this. It's the largest essentially blank slate you'll find in the region, there's plenty of room for new ideas and solutions that can work, or at least be acceptable, to most people. Things that could be included to fit this criteria:
The current proposal does (as far as I can tell) essentially none of these. Residents have no real reason besides the abstract promise of tax revenue to back the project, and plenty of reasons not to.
- New housing
- New higher paying office/biotech jobs and not just low-pay stadium ones
- Better transport links to Everett proper
- More green space
The properties along the Route 99 corridor are all heavily contaminated. The industrial uses have made them a nightmare for a developer to take on. The reason why Encore is the first major cleanup in the area is because casinos literally print money. Wynn could afford the cleanup for that reason.
Other uses in the corridor are going to require similar scales of return for investors to take on the cleanup expense. And the process of indemnifying the developer from hazardous waste issues is a bad move. You just end up with lower return on investment housing or commercial built on poorly capped hazardous waste, with toxic shit leaching into the basements, poisoning residents. (Check out Edgewater, New Jersey along the Hudson for an object lesson in what not to do).