Downtown Showdown

Today's screening with the Downtown Council PAC went about as well as I could expect. As I related earlier, their charter is all about Downtown. Bringing businesses to downtown, keeping businesses from leaving downtown, fixing all the broken curbs and horrible sidewalks in downtown. Sensing a pattern here? I understand their concerns completely. I myself love downtown and believe it is the centerpiece for not just Kansas City, but the entire metropolitan area. I think our downtown needs to be successful, but I also think we can do better in the area of tax incentives. There were some very powerful people in that room. Some I have met, others I've only read about. If I actually had any ambition to get that group's backing, and significant campaign contributions I would have been pretty nervous. As it was I just looked at it as a chance to introduce myself to them and let them know that I'm not the TIF hating monster they may have heard about. They're not bad people. They, like any group have their cause and want to forward it. The niceties ended after about two minutes and we got down to business. I got a prominent real estate developer fired up when I suggested that we shouldn't consider ourselves in cutthroat competition with Johnson County. We should work with Johnson County, not against them. Next it was a development attorney's turn to grill me about hypothetical deals. Was I suggesting that we not compete with Overland Park? Was I suggesting this, that or the other thing? Finally another major downtown player got into the act and questioned me about the $100 million it would take to completely bring downtown's curbs, sidewalks and signage up to snuff. It was a brutal thirty minutes. But you know what? I haven't had that much fun since grad school. A good old-fashioned knock down drag out debate over financial issues with some exceedingly smart and powerful individuals. I may not have distinguished myself as the pro-TIF, pro-economic incentives, pro-downtown at any cost candidate; but I sure had a lot of fun!