The agencies (AATA, Fed, City, DDA, AADL, AAPS) could have worked together on a plan to improve the flow and interactivity between their properties’ various functions and users, including library patrons, transit passengers, post office customers, parking structure patrons, etc., while at the same time improving the overall appearance of the area, its friendliness to pedestrians and its overall welcoming quality to visitors.

Each entity might also have enjoyed cost savings realized by eliminating speculative features and redundancies. For example, if the new library had been built on top of the new parking structure as part of the same project, there could have been enormous mutual savings in design and construction costs.

Instead, several years later, each entity is operating more or less in a vacuum while our city officials are obsessed with outlying TIF “corridors,” or commuter buses and trains for township residents. Not a single joint planning meeting has taken place between the government entities located in this critical central area, where they could have discussed mutual problems, ideas, goals and perhaps even joint funding opportunities. Worse, the city code apparently allows these individual public entities to ignore the downtown element of the City’s master plan, as well as the new downtown zoning that took years to develop.

The Mayor and Council seem to think their new outlying TIF corridors and commuter transportation initiatives will curry favor with Governor Rick “Collaboration” Snyder, but I wonder if Mr. Snyder is also watching the utter lack of leadership and the wasteful spending by multiple local agencies that’s taking place right in the heart of our city.