{"id":61,"date":"2006-01-20T15:59:18","date_gmt":"2006-01-20T20:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/?p=61"},"modified":"2020-01-02T11:11:58","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T16:11:58","slug":"renaissance-square-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/renaissance-square-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Renaissance Square One"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rochester blogger-journalist (blogalist?) Michael Caputo asks, today, whether the <a href=\"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/buh-bye-ferry-buh-bye\/\">fast ferry embarrassment<\/a> will cast a pall over other local spending initiatives.<\/p>\n<p>He interviewed former Monroe County legislator Bill Benet, a Democrat, about the Renaissance Square project. If you&#8217;re not from around these parts, Renaissance Square comprises a new downtown bus terminal, a new downtown community college campus, and a new downtown performing arts center. Price tag estimate $230 million.<\/p>\n<p>Caputo summarizes some of Benet&#8217;s comments:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Benet said that no one has described how the county and the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority might cover increased operating costs to operate the service through such a facility. And no one has explained if government would be willing to (gasp) subsidize a performing arts center if the money it makes can&#8217;t match the money it spends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is as good a place as any to mention that Renaissance Square received national blogosphere attention last fall when a letter from WHAM reporter Evan Dawson was published on Instapundit.<\/p>\n<p>Instapundit, if you haven&#8217;t heard, backs a blog-driven initiative intended to curb pork barrel spending.<\/p>\n<p>Dawson&#8217;s letter notes that &#8220;elected leaders&#8221; have tied the Renaissance Square arts center to the bus terminal in order to make it eligible for transportation earmarks.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I know that&#8217;s how politics works.<\/p>\n<p>But the result is that politicans are unlikely to consider the merits of each component of Renaissance Square separately, which bothers me.<\/p>\n<p>More of my thoughts on Renaissance Square <a href=\"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/turning-our-city-around\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rochester blogger-journalist (blogalist?) Michael Caputo asks, today, whether the fast ferry embarrassment will cast a pall over other local spending initiatives. He interviewed former Monroe County legislator Bill Benet, a Democrat, about the Renaissance Square project. If you&#8217;re not from &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/renaissance-square-one\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,17],"tags":[1194,87,386],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-rochester-new-york","tag-ren-square","tag-renaissance-square","tag-rochester-new-york"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5738,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/5738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}