Hemming Plaza Ad Hoc Committee Meeting today at 10am

[Noone]

Sounds like they are over complicating what should be a simple and affordable solution.

Exactly!

With a budget of $30k, I could give you two or three events at the park a week.  It's laughable when you compare that to how much money we spend on hosting events(all the businesses we support make money and beg us to do more).

^It really is unbelievable when you think about it.

But this is just the beginning when you think of our so called Public spaces and the Public, Private, Partnership within a newly created Downtown Investment Authority.

So who wants to kayak and fish under our brand new No Fishing signs  not before Waterways next to our Historic Promised 680' Downtown Public Pier?

I am Downtown and why you aren't.

[Noone]

It was announced at the DIA 11/20/13 Board meeting that there is a meeting on Hemming Plaza today at 3pm rm 825 Ed Ball bldg. From what I gathered this is it and I welcome any correction to my interpretation but this project will be moving forward today and there is one maybe two groups that will be making a pitch.

[ronchamblin]

Hemming Update -- Sunday -- Easter Morning.

I'm on the cafe patio .. reading the NYT & the TU .. with Americana and muffin.  Quiet.  I'm sitting, facing the park, behind the iron bars.

A man approaches on the sidewalk over my left shoulder, white fellow, 30 perhaps, wearing beige coat, and  .. mumbling.. "My great grandfather was ..  unintelligible .....".  He leaned over ....."Hey .. do you have a cigarette?"  Don't smoke.  "Can I have some coffee?  I got up and went inside.  He mumbled off.  What would I have done if the person requesting coffee had been somewhat well dressed, and had seemed normal?  In the past, I've made three or four espressos for sidewalk people, as there is nothing close on Sunday mornings.
   
About an hour later, while doing taxes, there are three white people sitting on the steps of the Snyder, one being the fellow asking for a smoke.  All seemed new to area.  Two were gesturing a little excessively -- perhaps alcohol, or via neurological cause.  The fat fellow appears to be texting. From my distance I couldn't determine if one was male or a female.  Two are engaging in lively conversation ... shaking hands several times.
 
Two black fellows, around thirty, come around the corner with plastic bags.  They take aluminum cans from the corner can, from our cans, and from the roll-off dumpster in front of Snyder.  They work fast ... finding perhaps fifteen cans. The fellow with beige coat rises, walks to where the fellows are working the roll-off dumpster, and walks in a circle of about 5' radius.  The two ignore him.

A short Asian fellow walks by, pushing a bicycle with a bucket filled with aluminum cans.  From around the corner, a white woman, somewhat heavy, looks in the trash can near the Snyder ... pulls something out and eats it.

The undetermined sex person stood up and began to walk .... giving evidence of being a male of the species.  There are about thirty people enjoying the park.

Life is good. 

[IrvAdams]

That's a nice slice of life snippet, Ron. Sounds like you can enjoy live entertainment by just walking outside. Happy Easter.

[ronchamblin]

Well I think its great that even when the city is shut down for Easter there are still a couple of people pulling the metal out of the landfills and using the recycling program.

Its amazing how we create these micro economies and ecospheres even in our dead urban areas.

I wonder what they made of the unfriendly guy reading his newspaper behind bars on Easter Sunday?

Wherever there is hunger ... wherever there is need....  the animal must act to reduce it, else it will die.  The animal doesn't care if the need is satisfied in the woods, in the suburbs, or in the city. 

These fellows, by whatever cause or circumstances, are obviously on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.  I would love to witness some of the fellows who have sequestered themselves high above the masses via obscene wealth, whether in government or business -- as gained via corrupt maneuvering and greed -- be forced to live by gathering aluminum from cans and dumpsters.

And this opinion, primarily because these beasts of greed, as a consequence of their efforts to become obscenely rich, destroyed the economy to the degree that these fellows pulling aluminum have few opportunities for jobs.  Where are the jobs?  Where is equality of opportunity? 

[ronchamblin]

Extracting metal from trash and dumps is good and necessary, as it works to improve the ecosystem.

I suspect these fellows would like to occasionally exercise other options.  Surely the income is seldom sufficient to supply a reasonably good quality of life.

Books?  The noble book.  Let me have them all ... so I can organize them, and make them available to all the curious....

[Noone]

Today at the 7/15/14 Finance agenda meeting 2014-434 Hemming Plaza will have a Public Hearing at the 7/22/14 Jacksonville city council meeting.