Dear Virginia, Free Lunch Now Costs Only a Dollar

I very much enjoy the TV commercial for the Dollar Menu of a fast food restaurant where the fellow goes from place to place, including a travel agency, (judging by what he's holding in his hand, a hanger) a dry cleaner, and a tanning salon while also being invited (sort of) to get out of a taxi he's just entered before he reaches the fast food place. He just wants to know 'what can I get for a dollar?' By now, here in The Rose of New England, we should have learned to never ask the question if you can't stand the answer.

We're edging our way towards an answer to that very question here in Norwich as we have a (seemingly) never-to-be repeated opportunity to buy acreage from the State of Connecticut for the low, low price of only one dollar. But wait, there's more. A decision on the possible purchase of the former Norwich Hospital Site property will be made by the Norwich City Council (nice job, previous Council) and as part of that process there's a special meeting tonight at seven in the basement conference room of 23 Union Street by the Commission on the City Plan, CCP, to offer a recommendation, required by the charter, on a purchase decision by the City Council.

It promises to be a very organized meeting, though the agenda doesn't seem to allow for comment by the very people on whose behalf the decision will be made, the residents of the city. You wouldn't think the CCP would want a repeat of all the shouting and yelling (I think the newspapers called it vigorous discussion) that went on outside, after their approval of the Byron Brook resort. Neither would I, but then again, I didn't think they wanted it the first time, either. On the up side, we all improved our vocabulary skills after that and can now define a six letter word as if it were a well-known four letter word.

I attended many meetings of the Advisory Committee the last City Council appointed (very late in the day) to research a purchase, and I've read their final report and the cost benefits analysis and assumptions behind that analysis delivered to the previous City Council. I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of their recommendations. There's a lot of hard work contained in it, and perhaps some creatively 'rounded' numbers (five million dollars for remediation? I recall hearing bigger numbers at some of the meetings). A read-through of all their deliberations doesn't take very long and is quite helpful but here's what I'm still looking to have answered:

If we buy "our" part of the Norwich Hospital Site, then what? Are we thinking too much about the purchase itself and not enough about the impact its acquisition has on the city and the region? Pretend you're a developer. Oh, you are a developer? Even better! Why would you choose our piece of this property over the soon-to-be-painfully-vacant corporate Pfizer campus in New London, one of the numerous already vacant spaces in the Norwich Business Park or in any of the broken and blighted buildings sitting vacant in all four corners of the city? Because you like to wait for years before putting a shovel into the ground. Really?

And what happens to the price of ALL available office space in Norwich when we create tens of thousands MORE office space footage by purchasing the hospital property? I know, let's pretend it'll only be zoned industrial--except then we get to ask that question again as we have lots of 'excess capacity' for industrial space, too. Everything comes with a price and with a cost and we have to figure both.

There's a lot of talk, and references in reports, of the "hope" many have that grants will be secured to subsidize the millions of dollars needed for remediation, though the specifics of exactly who has this money and how to gain access to it are vague. Others "hope" that specific types of development can be attracted to our portion of this property. Did I mention that Preston, the neighboring municipality has already plunked their dollar down and bought over four hundred acres of the site, the part that was within their borders. Surely you've heard of Utopia? All I can ever hear is Tom Waits' Step Right Up, whenever someone mentions this project....but all the music obscures a most fundamental point: Hope is NOT a plan.

But maybe the City Plan is the perfect starting point for tonight’s meeting. Using the City Plan as a map, refine the route and define the path to the Norwich we should be building. Working with volunteer municipal boards and committees, create the consensus that is a condition necessary to the implementation and execution of this plan and finally we can become the city we believe we were meant to be. This will require a lot of work and isn't a project that can be done by a half dozen people and zipped through the City Council. Or we can keep our eyes closed and hold our noses, we have a lot of practice at both of those, and be amazed when we come up One Happy Ending Short.
-bill kenny