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City Center Demo Prevented Decades of Pain
by Mike Thompson
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
The best line of the 2007 mayoral campaign came from challenger Bill Todd – “Mr. Coleman, tear down this mall!†He of course was referring to the then near empty City Center Mall.
Now it’s happening and it’s amazing that many people still complain that demolition crews are destroying the downtown shopping center. They complain that it costs too much, there is no real plan to develop the site, and the city should have found another use for the building – like a casino.
But if you look at the experiences of other cities- especially small and mid-sized cities – Columbus is doing the right thing. You can debate whether it was wise to build the mall in the first place. You can debate whether government incorrectly gave tax breaks to competing suburban malls. But you can’t debate death. City Center was dead and the best thing to do is bury it.
READ MORE: http://www.wosu.org/blogs/cotr/?p=669
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