On our 1 November show we discussed a variety of issues related to fair trade. To learn more visit the following sites:
Ten Thousand Villages:
http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/
You can order your holiday gifts on line and make sure the money you spend improves the lives of the artisans and craftspeople who make the product and does not go to line the pockets of rich multinationals corporations.
Fair Trade Advocates:
http://www.k-state.edu/fairtrade/
A good spot to begin learning about Fair Trade.
For information about "Buy Nothing Day" on 23 November, visit:
http://www.adbusters.org
Oxfam American
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/
Watch Oxfam's video "Reform the Farm Bill" at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwLTsE0rVeo
Watch a video on fair trade coffee vs. Starbucks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZGr2SBg-F8
Then visit:
http://www.maketradefair.com/en/index.php?file=starbucks_main.html
But choose locally owned coffee shops over the multinational!
You might also be interested in reading a commentary: "The Great Retraining Lie: how our government gives false hope to workers displaced by so-called "free trade" by offering retraining to obtain jobs that will never replace the economic security inherent in a job lost to so-called "free trade." The false hope is offered by Democrats and Republicans. Visit:
http://www.workinglife.org/
Fair Trade Events - November 11 - 13
Sunday, November 11
12:00 PM - 6:00PM Annual German meal and Ten thousand Villages Bazaar at Potoff Hall, Cico Park.
6:00pm CrossRoads of ECM. Hunger Banquet. Hosted by KSU Fair Trade Advocates. Exciting and educational, the Hunger Banquet engages diners in learning about global inequality through a "world-wide banquet." Dinner served, catered by The Little Grill. Tickets available at ECM and all walk-ins are welcome. Suggested donation for students: $4.
Monday, November 12
10:00am-4:00pm Sunflower, Cottonwood and Flint Hills Rooms of K-State Student Union. Fair Trade Marketplace.
11:30am-12:30pm Presentation by Summer Lewis, Interfaith Liaison for Equal Exchange. K-State Student Union Stateroom 2.
12-1pm Fair Trade Fashion Show. K-State Student Union.
1-2pm Eyes of Bastet Belly Dancers. Bosco Student Plaza.
7pm Film: "Silent Killer" Hemisphere Room, Hale Library. Panel discussion following. The event is co-sponsored by KSU Fair Trade Advocates and the Dow Chemical Multicultural Resource Center. "Silent Killer" is a powerful documentary about the unfinished campaign against world hunger, addressing the role of agricultural development, biotechnology and anti-hunger movements.
Tuesday, November 13
10am-4pm Fair Trade Marketplace.
12-1pm "Higher or Lower" Fair Trade Game Show. Bosco Student Plaza. A fun activity for everyone! Stop by and win Fair Trade prizes. Organized by KSU Fair Trade Advocates.
12-1pm Union Foodcourt "walk through" fashion show.
Wednesday, November 14
10am-4pm Fair Trade Marketplace.
11:30am-12:30pm Presentation by Summer Lewis, Interfaith Liaison for Equal Exchange. K-State Student Union Flint Hills Room.
12-1pm Yosakoi Japanese Dance Group. Bosco Student Plaza.
Additional Activities and Events:
Tuesday, November 13
Connections Reign: Under our Umbrella for Social Change, partly organized by WOMST 380 "Women and Global Social Change"
10:30am-1:30pm "Connections Reign". General activities booths - Bosco Student Plaza and inside the Union on the first floor, near foodcourt. Activities include: Social Change trivia contest and prizes, Education on women's safety: help color high heels to represent the number of women who are assaulted every four years at K-State.
Recycling Bin Scavenger Hunt: prizes provided by Howie's recycling, Fair Trade educational activities and events: learn about how fair trade helps end hunger and promotes gender, racial and cultural inclusivity. Buy your Fair Trade t-shirt, and learn where to buy Fair Trade t-shirts for your organizations.
5:30-7pm High Heel Walk to End Violence Against Women at K-State and in Manhattan. All organizations and individual men and women are encouraged to participate. Men and women will wear high heels and other shoes to "walk a Mile in Women's Shoes". Participants show that they are both identifying with women and the violence that women face, and protesting the ongoing violence against women. At 5:30 pm meet in from of the Beach Art Museum for our walk through Aggieville. Food provided. Prizes given for best overall outfit, prettiest shoes and the group with most participants.
31 October 2007
29 October 2007
Downtown Redevelopment
Our show on October 25th was dedicated to the topic of downtown redevelopment and our guests included Gwyn Riffel of Downtown Manhattan, Inc. and Barbara and Jay Nelson of the Strecker- Nelson Art Galley.
For more information of Downtown Manhattan visit their website at:
http://downtown.manhattanks.org/
For information on the downtown redevelopment project visit:
http://www.ci.manhattan.ks.us/index.asp?NID=264
Commentary to think about:
The American Police State
by Chris Hedges
Published on Monday, October 29, 2007 by TruthDig.com
For more information of Downtown Manhattan visit their website at:
http://downtown.manhattanks.org/
For information on the downtown redevelopment project visit:
http://www.ci.manhattan.ks.us/index.asp?NID=264
Commentary to think about:
The American Police State
by Chris Hedges
Published on Monday, October 29, 2007 by TruthDig.com
A Dallas jury, a week ago, deadlocked in its deliberations and caused a mistrial in the government case against this country’s largest Islamic charity. The action raises a defiant fist on the sinking ship of American democracy.
If we lived in a state where due process and the rule of law could curb the despotism of the Bush administration, this mistrial might be counted a victory. But we do not. The jury may have rejected the federal government’s claim that the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development funneled millions of dollars to Middle Eastern terrorists. It may have acquitted Mohammad el-Mezain, the former chairman of the foundation, of virtually all criminal charges related to funding terrorism (the jury deadlocked on one of the 32 charges against el-Mezain), and it may have deadlocked on the charges that had been lodged against four other former leaders of the charity, but don’t be fooled. This mistrial will do nothing to impede the administration’s ongoing contempt for the rule of law. It will do nothing to stop the curtailment of our civil liberties and rights. The grim march toward a police state continues.
Constitutional rights are minor inconveniences, noisome chatter, flies to be batted away on the steady road to despotism. And no one, not the courts, not the press, not the gutless Democratic opposition, not a compliant and passive citizenry hypnotized by tawdry television spectacles and celebrity gossip, seems capable of stopping the process. Those in power know this. We, too, might as well know it.
The Bush administration, which froze the foundation’s finances three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and indicted its officials three years later on charges that they provided funds for the militant group Hamas, has ensured that the foundation and all other Palestinian charities will never reopen in the United States. Any organized support for Palestinians from within the U.S. has been rendered impossible. The goal of the Israeli government and the Bush administration-despite the charade of peace negotiations to be held at Annapolis-is to grind defiant Palestinians into the dirt. Israel, which has plunged the Gaza Strip into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, has now begun to ban fuel supplies and sever electrical service. The severe deprivation, the Israelis hope, will see the overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza and the reinstatement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has become the Marshal Pétain of the Palestinian people.
The Dallas trial-like all of the major terrorism trials conducted by this administration, from the Florida case against the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami al-Arian, which also ended in a mistrial, to the recent decision by a jury in Chicago to acquit two men of charges of financing Hamas-has been a judicial failure. William Neal, a juror in the Dallas trial, told the Associated Press that the case “was strung together with macaroni noodles. There was so little evidence.”
Such trials, however, have been politically expedient. The accusations, true or untrue, serve the aims of the administration. A jury in Tampa, Chicago or Dallas can dismiss the government’s assaults on individual rights, but the draconian restrictions put in place because of the mendacious charges remain firmly implanted within the system. It is the charges, not the facts, which matter.
Dr. al-Arian, who was supposed to have been released and deported in April, is still in a Virginia prison because he will not testify in a separate case before a grand jury. The professor, broken by the long ordeal of his trial and unable to raise another million dollars in legal fees for a retrial, pleaded guilty to a minor charge in the hopes that his persecution would end. It has not. Or take the case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who in 2002 was spirited away by Homeland Security from JFK Airport to Syria, where he spent 10 months being tortured in a coffin-like cell. He was, upon his release, exonerated of terrorism. Arar testified before a House panel this month about how he was abducted by the U.S. and interrogated, stripped of his legal rights and tortured. But he couldn’t testify in person. He spoke to the House members on a video link from Canada. He is forbidden by Homeland Security to enter the United States because he allegedly poses a threat to national security.
Those accused of being involved in conspiracies and terrorism plots, as in all police states, become nonpersons. There is no rehabilitation. There is no justice.
“He was never given a hearing nor did the Canadian consulate, his lawyer, or his family know of his fate,” Amnesty International wrote of Arar. “Expulsion in such circumstances, without a fair hearing, and to a country known for regularly torturing their prisoners, violates the U.S. Government’s obligations under international law, specifically the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”
You can almost hear Dick Cheney yawn.
The Bush administration shut down the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development six years ago and froze its assets. There was no hearing or trial. It became a crime for anyone to engage in transactions with the foundation. The administration never produced evidence to support the charges. It did not have any. In the “war on terror,” evidence is unnecessary. An executive order is enough. The foundation sued the government in a federal court in the District of Columbia. Behind closed doors, the government presented secret evidence that the charity had no opportunity to see or rebut. The charity’s case was dismissed.
The government has closed seven Muslim charities in the United States and frozen their assets. Not one of them, or any person associated with them, has been found guilty of financing terrorism. They will remain shut. George W. Bush can tar any organization or individual, here or abroad, as being part of a terrorist conspiracy and by fiat render them powerless. He does not need to make formal charges. He does not need to wait for a trial verdict. Secret evidence, which these court cases have exposed as a sham, is enough. The juries in Tampa, Chicago and Dallas did their duty. They spoke for the rights of citizens. They spoke for the protection of due process and the rule of law. They threw small hurdles in front of the emergent police state. But the abuse rolls on. I fear terrorism. I know it is real. I am sure terrorists will strike again on American soil. But while terrorists can wound and disrupt our democracy, only we can kill it.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.“ For more information on Chris Hedges, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges
16 October 2007
The 1987 March on Washington Twenty Years Later
by Christopher E. Renner
20 years ago today (11 October) I stood on the corner of Pennsylvania and 15th Streets in Washington directing the human traffic that flowed by for three and a half hours. Over 300,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people and their allies march passed me during the course of those hours. My role was to be a peace keeper - to keep the marchers moving and standing between any counter-protesters that might show up. Only one did - yelling that we “were wrong,” he threw himself into the marchers pushing me to the ground. He brought the march to a stop - he looked at thousands of people looking back at him. Dumbfounded, he turned and walked away. That was the only reported event of violence against the marchers along the route the entire day.
Many of the marchers, like myself, were angry over the government's slow and inadequate response to the AIDS crisis - President Reagan had refused to even say the word in public - as well as the Supreme Court's 1986 decision to uphold sodomy laws in Bowers v. Hardwick. A decision the court would overturn 14 years later in Lawrence v. Texas.
As the last marchers came by, we peace keepers joined the rear of the march and when we arrived on the National Mall we were greet by over 500,000 people. Today researchers put the number at closer to 650,000 people, even if the New York Times had repeatedly reported that only 200,000 people had shown up. Today the 1987 March is considered the largest civil rights march in the history of the US.
In a foreshadowing of more recent protests, the day before the March, an estimated 2,000 Gay and Lesbian couples exchanged marriage vows in front of the Internal Revenue Service. On the Monday after the March, more than 600 protesters were arrested at the US Supreme Court protesting the 1986 Hardwick Decision, making it the largest act of civil disobedience since the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.
1987 had been a watershed for me. I had spent the summer attending graduated school and traveling North American with Italian friends the months of August and September. Landing in Washington a week before the march, I walked into the March’s offices and said: “I here, put me to work.” People were just amazed that someone would come from Italy to work on the March. In the next few days, more and more of us showed up at the office door. We were there to create change.
The 1987 March was the first time the NAMES Project quilt was displayed. It succeeded in bringing national attention to the impact of AIDS on gay communities. In the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, and a president who pretended that as long as gay people, and people from Haiti and hemophiliacs were dying, it was okay; a tapestry of nearly two thousand fabric panels offered a powerful tribute to the lives of some of those who had been lost in the pandemic.
I had lost my first friends in 1986 to AIDS. The first to died was Jack Jacknick, who died on my 30th birthday. By the time the march took place I had lost ten friends. I was angry, extremely angry. In my backpack were three quit panels I had made while I was at my childhood home in Beattie before the March. I had heard about this effort to make a quilt to memorialize people who had died, since so many had died alone, as we, the most industrialized, richest nation on earth, reacted with fear and ignorance to the health crisis unfolding before our eyes.
I listened to Jessie Jackson make an impassioned speech on the need for human rights and medical care for the poor. Looked for friends, who I never found -- how do you find anyone in 500,000 people? Toward the late afternoon, I began working towards the west end of the Mall, to the place the Name Project Quilt was displayed.
Entering the display was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. It was too personal; too filled with pain; too emotionally wrenching for me to describe it words. As I looked at the panels, sadness filled me; then tears filled my eyes. I looked at memorials made by friends, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, life partners and teachers. They gave the crisis a human face, a face that haunts me to this day. How could so many Americans died what was a truly horrific death and our government pretend they didn’t exist?
As I walked though the NAMES Project display, it brought to my mind the memories of a holocaust survivor I had read in his memoir: The Men with the Pink Triangle. No single book has had more of an effect on my life than that book. It forever changed how I see the world and government. As I looked at the quite crowd walking through the display, I saw survivors of a new holocaust.
Twenty years later the AIDS crisis has killed all but three of the gay friends I had alive in 1987. As a nation, we still fail to publicly hold our government accountable for the disinformation and inaction of the Reagan and Bush administrations. Moreover, young people are more at risk of contracting HIV today than they were in 1987. We have failed to provide comprehensive health education to those who need it the most. Young people walk into their early 20s without the knowledge they need to save their own lives.
Twenty years later, much has changed and much has not. AIDS no longer is the emotional issue it was in 1987. The human rights movement for LGBT equality has been high-jacked by those pushing the assimilationist agenda of “married respectability” while issues of racism, classism and ablism go unchecked in most of the LGBT community. Yes sodomy is no longer a crime, but in Kansas the statute is still on the law books and gay males are still harassed by the police. Lesbian women and their relationships are belittled by the mainstream media as nothing more than sexual fantasies for heterosexual males. Since after all, male heterosexuals are what it’s all about, right?
So twenty years later I am still waiting for the most basic of rights: freedom from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations, which is why I marched twenty years ago and why I continue to fight.
20 years ago today (11 October) I stood on the corner of Pennsylvania and 15th Streets in Washington directing the human traffic that flowed by for three and a half hours. Over 300,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people and their allies march passed me during the course of those hours. My role was to be a peace keeper - to keep the marchers moving and standing between any counter-protesters that might show up. Only one did - yelling that we “were wrong,” he threw himself into the marchers pushing me to the ground. He brought the march to a stop - he looked at thousands of people looking back at him. Dumbfounded, he turned and walked away. That was the only reported event of violence against the marchers along the route the entire day.
Many of the marchers, like myself, were angry over the government's slow and inadequate response to the AIDS crisis - President Reagan had refused to even say the word in public - as well as the Supreme Court's 1986 decision to uphold sodomy laws in Bowers v. Hardwick. A decision the court would overturn 14 years later in Lawrence v. Texas.
As the last marchers came by, we peace keepers joined the rear of the march and when we arrived on the National Mall we were greet by over 500,000 people. Today researchers put the number at closer to 650,000 people, even if the New York Times had repeatedly reported that only 200,000 people had shown up. Today the 1987 March is considered the largest civil rights march in the history of the US.
In a foreshadowing of more recent protests, the day before the March, an estimated 2,000 Gay and Lesbian couples exchanged marriage vows in front of the Internal Revenue Service. On the Monday after the March, more than 600 protesters were arrested at the US Supreme Court protesting the 1986 Hardwick Decision, making it the largest act of civil disobedience since the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.
1987 had been a watershed for me. I had spent the summer attending graduated school and traveling North American with Italian friends the months of August and September. Landing in Washington a week before the march, I walked into the March’s offices and said: “I here, put me to work.” People were just amazed that someone would come from Italy to work on the March. In the next few days, more and more of us showed up at the office door. We were there to create change.
The 1987 March was the first time the NAMES Project quilt was displayed. It succeeded in bringing national attention to the impact of AIDS on gay communities. In the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, and a president who pretended that as long as gay people, and people from Haiti and hemophiliacs were dying, it was okay; a tapestry of nearly two thousand fabric panels offered a powerful tribute to the lives of some of those who had been lost in the pandemic.
I had lost my first friends in 1986 to AIDS. The first to died was Jack Jacknick, who died on my 30th birthday. By the time the march took place I had lost ten friends. I was angry, extremely angry. In my backpack were three quit panels I had made while I was at my childhood home in Beattie before the March. I had heard about this effort to make a quilt to memorialize people who had died, since so many had died alone, as we, the most industrialized, richest nation on earth, reacted with fear and ignorance to the health crisis unfolding before our eyes.
I listened to Jessie Jackson make an impassioned speech on the need for human rights and medical care for the poor. Looked for friends, who I never found -- how do you find anyone in 500,000 people? Toward the late afternoon, I began working towards the west end of the Mall, to the place the Name Project Quilt was displayed.
Entering the display was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. It was too personal; too filled with pain; too emotionally wrenching for me to describe it words. As I looked at the panels, sadness filled me; then tears filled my eyes. I looked at memorials made by friends, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, life partners and teachers. They gave the crisis a human face, a face that haunts me to this day. How could so many Americans died what was a truly horrific death and our government pretend they didn’t exist?
As I walked though the NAMES Project display, it brought to my mind the memories of a holocaust survivor I had read in his memoir: The Men with the Pink Triangle. No single book has had more of an effect on my life than that book. It forever changed how I see the world and government. As I looked at the quite crowd walking through the display, I saw survivors of a new holocaust.
Twenty years later the AIDS crisis has killed all but three of the gay friends I had alive in 1987. As a nation, we still fail to publicly hold our government accountable for the disinformation and inaction of the Reagan and Bush administrations. Moreover, young people are more at risk of contracting HIV today than they were in 1987. We have failed to provide comprehensive health education to those who need it the most. Young people walk into their early 20s without the knowledge they need to save their own lives.
Twenty years later, much has changed and much has not. AIDS no longer is the emotional issue it was in 1987. The human rights movement for LGBT equality has been high-jacked by those pushing the assimilationist agenda of “married respectability” while issues of racism, classism and ablism go unchecked in most of the LGBT community. Yes sodomy is no longer a crime, but in Kansas the statute is still on the law books and gay males are still harassed by the police. Lesbian women and their relationships are belittled by the mainstream media as nothing more than sexual fantasies for heterosexual males. Since after all, male heterosexuals are what it’s all about, right?
So twenty years later I am still waiting for the most basic of rights: freedom from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations, which is why I marched twenty years ago and why I continue to fight.
Downtown Redevelopment
Dial Corporation has requested major changes to the agreed upon plan for the Manhattan PUD. The following is an explanation from the Manhattan/Riley Country Preservation Alliance, who were represented by Michael Mecseri and Jane Hill on our 6 September show.
From the Manhattan/Riley County Preservation Alliance Emergency Board Meeting:
Explanation
Dial Corp announced On August 21 that it was going to request a major change to the Planned Unit Development at the north end of the downtown to accommodate a new 100,000 square foot HyVee grocery store with a liquor store and drive through coffee chain.
This change in the PUD would do the following:
1. Move or demolish the historic Strasser House
2. Eliminate nearly all of the planning housing units that would have been built on 4th street between Osage and Moro
3. Force the owners of the homes in the Ward 2 residential district to face a two block screening wall, behind which all of the trash receptacles, air conditioning units, loading docks, and temporary storage containers would be located.
The Process
Because this is such a major change in the PUD, Dial is obligated to go to the Planning board for permission to build this new store. The planning board will meet on October 1 to hear Dial’s arguments and to hear public imput into the request.
The City commission will hear the same arguments on October 16th at its regular legislative session. THE PLANNING BOARD IS THE KEY GATEWAY TO STOPPING THIS CHANGE IN THE PUD.
If the planning board votes NO, it will take 4 commissioners to overturn it.
If the planning board votes YES, it will take only 2 commissioners to sustain it.
Frequently Asked Questions:
1. Why has Dial been allowed to make all these changes anyway? What happened to the plan we were shown at the start??
Unfortunately, when the original development agreements were signed between the city and Dial, the city forfeited its interest in determining who the future designers and tenants would ultimately be. This was in exchange for not having to put any money up front for the development, thereby lowering the city’s financial ‘risk.’ This was done by an earlier commission and does not represent the work of the present one. A copy of the Development Agreement is available for you to look at.
2. What about the Design Guidelines created by the citizen steering committee?
The Final development agreement and PUD has design guidelines in it, but again, the city was not insistent on making these guidelines mandatory—so legally Dial is not bound to follow them—and they have chosen not to. Pointing out Dial’s failure to adhere to the guidelines however is a good tactic in discrediting this latest change to the PUD.
3. Isn’t the Strasser House protected by the National Register or an agreement?
Yes and no. The City of Manhattan and the State Historic Preservation Officer signed a Memorandum of Understanding at the conclusion of a review of the historic buildings in the north end redevelopment area. The MOU is the end result of a negotiation that allowed Dial to tear down several OTHER historic buildings, with the understanding that they would not touch the Strasser house and would integrate it into the design.That, unfortunately has not been honored. THE CITY CAN CHOOSE NOT TO HONOR THE MOU. BUT YOU CAN CERTAINLY TELL THE COMMISSIONERS THAT YOU EXPECT THEM TO HONOR IT.
4. If Dial is turned down, won’t that affect the whole project and the South End Redevelopment?
Actually, what will happen is anyone’s guess. And speculation at this point is pretty wild. We simply don’t know what Dial will do. We know that there was plenty of interest by other retailers but Dial didn’t like their terms. Perhaps this will push them to find better tenants, perhaps they will choose to leave the development undone for a period of time. Perhaps they will sue the city, perhaps a meteor will hit their Omaha offices. The fact is, in spite of lots of opinions floating around, we don’t actually know what will happen. What we DO KNOW is what WILL happen if we allow this change to the PUD to take place. If Dial doesn’t make its tenant percentages, the city will likely have to put up some money to keep the project going, BUT that will also give the city more imput into the design and the tenants. LET YOUR COMMISSIONERS KNOW THAT THIS IS A MORE ACCEPTABLE ALTERNATIVE TO THIS PUD CHANGE. That will go a long way to helping them uphold the current plan.
For more information on the Alliance, visit their website at:
http://www.preservemanhattan.org/
From the Manhattan/Riley County Preservation Alliance Emergency Board Meeting:
Explanation
Dial Corp announced On August 21 that it was going to request a major change to the Planned Unit Development at the north end of the downtown to accommodate a new 100,000 square foot HyVee grocery store with a liquor store and drive through coffee chain.
This change in the PUD would do the following:
1. Move or demolish the historic Strasser House
2. Eliminate nearly all of the planning housing units that would have been built on 4th street between Osage and Moro
3. Force the owners of the homes in the Ward 2 residential district to face a two block screening wall, behind which all of the trash receptacles, air conditioning units, loading docks, and temporary storage containers would be located.
The Process
Because this is such a major change in the PUD, Dial is obligated to go to the Planning board for permission to build this new store. The planning board will meet on October 1 to hear Dial’s arguments and to hear public imput into the request.
The City commission will hear the same arguments on October 16th at its regular legislative session. THE PLANNING BOARD IS THE KEY GATEWAY TO STOPPING THIS CHANGE IN THE PUD.
If the planning board votes NO, it will take 4 commissioners to overturn it.
If the planning board votes YES, it will take only 2 commissioners to sustain it.
Frequently Asked Questions:
1. Why has Dial been allowed to make all these changes anyway? What happened to the plan we were shown at the start??
Unfortunately, when the original development agreements were signed between the city and Dial, the city forfeited its interest in determining who the future designers and tenants would ultimately be. This was in exchange for not having to put any money up front for the development, thereby lowering the city’s financial ‘risk.’ This was done by an earlier commission and does not represent the work of the present one. A copy of the Development Agreement is available for you to look at.
2. What about the Design Guidelines created by the citizen steering committee?
The Final development agreement and PUD has design guidelines in it, but again, the city was not insistent on making these guidelines mandatory—so legally Dial is not bound to follow them—and they have chosen not to. Pointing out Dial’s failure to adhere to the guidelines however is a good tactic in discrediting this latest change to the PUD.
3. Isn’t the Strasser House protected by the National Register or an agreement?
Yes and no. The City of Manhattan and the State Historic Preservation Officer signed a Memorandum of Understanding at the conclusion of a review of the historic buildings in the north end redevelopment area. The MOU is the end result of a negotiation that allowed Dial to tear down several OTHER historic buildings, with the understanding that they would not touch the Strasser house and would integrate it into the design.That, unfortunately has not been honored. THE CITY CAN CHOOSE NOT TO HONOR THE MOU. BUT YOU CAN CERTAINLY TELL THE COMMISSIONERS THAT YOU EXPECT THEM TO HONOR IT.
4. If Dial is turned down, won’t that affect the whole project and the South End Redevelopment?
Actually, what will happen is anyone’s guess. And speculation at this point is pretty wild. We simply don’t know what Dial will do. We know that there was plenty of interest by other retailers but Dial didn’t like their terms. Perhaps this will push them to find better tenants, perhaps they will choose to leave the development undone for a period of time. Perhaps they will sue the city, perhaps a meteor will hit their Omaha offices. The fact is, in spite of lots of opinions floating around, we don’t actually know what will happen. What we DO KNOW is what WILL happen if we allow this change to the PUD to take place. If Dial doesn’t make its tenant percentages, the city will likely have to put up some money to keep the project going, BUT that will also give the city more imput into the design and the tenants. LET YOUR COMMISSIONERS KNOW THAT THIS IS A MORE ACCEPTABLE ALTERNATIVE TO THIS PUD CHANGE. That will go a long way to helping them uphold the current plan.
For more information on the Alliance, visit their website at:
http://www.preservemanhattan.org/
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