The Palace is a goner. Is there any point in continuing to pretend Harrison Square is a matter of debate instead of a done deal?
The city has agreed to purchase the Palace restaurant, a key property inside the city's Harrison Square project boundaries, for $2.4 million.
City officials and restaurant owner Rick Rogers are set to close the deal at 11 a.m. today, said Greg Leatherman, deputy director of community development.
Purchasing the property will save the city money when building a parking garage there, Leatherman said. The parking garage would have needed to be “L”-shaped around the restaurant, costing more than a rectangular-shaped garage.
I've been stopping at the Palace (formerly Bill's Palace) for more than 20 years. When Lincoln had a lot more people downtown, there was a guaranteed stream of business, and Bill's offered a variety of plain but tasty food, including the best Beef Manhattan in town, at reasonable prices. That makes this downtwon debate personal -- where can I now get such a good sandwich? Pay $5 for a hot dog at the ball game?
It was the kind of unpretentious place it felt comfortable to hang out in, not the business developers want to see surrounded by a multimillion-dollar development. Was it worth $2.4 million? Absolutely, since that's what the city was willing to pay for it. The Palace was the last Harrison Square holdout.
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That really is too bad - I remember Bill's Palace, ... hell, I remember Bill. When I was working at a downtown bank's data center from '73 to '75 on second shift, Bills was the place to be for dinner. And, you're right, Leo, I still remember those Beef Manhattans - best in town.
Things change, no? Sure it was a nice place. Strangely, I enjoyed eating there myself. But establishment come and go all the time. How often do we talk about the great downtown amenities like Freimann Square, the Performing Arts Center, the Embassy, the Botanical Gardens, etc.? Weren't older, well-loved establishments torn down for those?
Not everything old deserves to stay, just as not everything new deserves to be built. In great cities, there's always a balance.
And who knows, with that kind of money, maybe The Palace can reopen somewhere else downtown? Maybe even at the same reasonable prices!
I can't help wondering if the money sums like 84million 160 million and 500 million couldn't have helped keep G.E., I.H.C., Dana, Phelps dodge,Fruhaugh Toquime echrich, Wayne and many others open and producing tax paying employees. These employees could support some of these excesses that are now being pushed down our throats.
Go ahead and consider Harrison Square a done deal. That, at least, will give the local newspapers an explanation for doing no reporting on the project. Calling Greg Leatherman and asking for a comment on the most recent City press release, then adding his comment and calling it a news report, is silly. Since it is a done deal, you can give up even the pretense of being reporters on the issue. Well done.
I agree with JR to the extent that the federal government set a landmark precedent when it bailed Chrysler Corporation out of impending bankruptcy and closure.
Sure, the feds have declined to bail out other huge companies since then, but Chrysler remains an example of a company that is worth saving being saved. For most of the time since Chrysler was bailed out, it has been the most successful American-made car company by most reviews.
It is not out of the question that there may be companies in Fort Wayne worth saving, on a much smaller scale, by the aid of city government (or other larger Ft. Wayne institutions), by means of grants or loans, whether we characterize those measures as pragmatic or philanthropic.
As we grew up, many of us heard our parents warn us about our allowances "burning a hole in our pockets." Government can't afford politicians who have hung onto that attitude into adulthood.
The more money and resources we have to allot, whether it's our own or an investor's, the more prudent we have to be about saving, responsible investing, maintaining reserves, and deciding if, when and how to spend clearly budgeted portions of the treasury on things we really, really need to do -- as compared to the many other alternatives of virtually equal priority which will not be funded as a result.
Public servants large and small know this isn't rocket science, it is and should be business as usual for successful enterprises of any size both profit and non-profit. No one should settle for less competent leadership, in my view.