Last week, mayoral candidate, Doug England, offered a proposal to move the operations currently housed on the third floor of the City-County Building to the the fire house at Fourth and Spring streets.
I think his idea has merit. It would create a true City Hall. The current third floor offices, once moved, could be allocated space compatible with today's needs rather than the needs of 1962. The fire house is one of the nicer buildings built in New Albany in some time and it would be worthy of the name City Hall. It has ample parking for citizens conducting business with the city. The spreading out of city employees toward the eastern edge of downtown could benefit businesses somewhat. I'm sure Mr. England could add many more positive reasons for the move to the new site.
If Mr. England's suggestion is accepted it would have one obvious consequence. There would need to be a new fire house built to replace the formerly new fire house that would become the new City Hall.
One of the points raised against the location of the Fourth and Spring fire house before it was built was the greater distance from the west end neighborhoods and Silver Hills. Greater distance, it was feared, would mean longer response time. As far as I can recall this has, fortunately, not been a problem yet.
Location of the new fire house should be in the west end with access to that major population area as well as the businesses downtown, hotels, I-64 , Silver Hills and Scribner Place.
I believe a site worthy of serious consideration is the current home of the adult video store on Main Street. This business does not offer the best introduction to our city for people passing through to Caesars. Locating the fire house there would bring this critical service to the place it is needed. It would eliminate the contentious adult store which could not easily relocate because, you may recall, it was allowed to open since no law had been written to exclude such establishments. A tougher licensing law is now on the books.
If Mr. England would add this location of the new fire house to his proposal for the new City Hall perhaps he could get even greater approval of his idea.
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5 comments:
I believe he is floating the idea of placing it behind the Hampton Inn.
Check out the current issue of Business First. Look under Indiana Tax Liens. The adult video store on Main St. owes over 30K in back taxes. Not exactly a boon to the economy.
new albanian:
I wonder if that is the low area that faces Seventh Street?
I just feel that wiping the slate clean by replacing the porno store with a necessary public building would be, in the bottom liners' vernacular, a win-win.
If the neighborhood has developed an affinity for the existing edifice, perhaps we could insist that the new fire house be painted purple.
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Anonymouse:
That is interesting information; it could be the signal a willing seller or be the harbinger of a three-for-one video sale.
For the safety sake of the west end, I hope it is the former and that we can muster the will to seize the moment.
It would seem, then, that the free market is making a statement about the adult store's survival prospects.
I'm not disputing your choice of locations, only pointing out that the west end fire station will in part be a pay back to CM Coffey for election support. Why don't we cut to the chase and ask the Wizard of Westside where he'd like to se eit located?
new albanian:
The west end does, in fact, have marginally less fire protection today than it did prior to the closing of the station at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. If the newest fire house is morphed into City Hall as most, I believe, agree would be a good idea, it forces the city to find a new location. It seems to me the best location for a new fire house would be in the west end to fill the void left by the closing of the one at West Tenth Street. Perhaps my naivete is in evidence here, but I never considered building a fire house in the west end a quid for Coffey's quo. Undoubtedly, it would please any council member to have a fire station locate in his/her district but that should not color our perception of where the best location might be.
As for my preference of the porno store lot as a location for a new fire house, I simply saw it as a chance to kill two birds with one stone. I see the current Third Floor meeting room as wholly inadequate for public forums and would expect any new venue would be a vast improvement, ultimately redounding to the benefit of the community at large. Elimination of the porn store in the process of relocating City Hall, I saw as a means of bringing more people toward support of the City Hall idea which is, I believe, the real goal on which to focus.
In an earlier post here I suggested the City move its public meetings into a renovated Baptist Tabernacle building just across Fourth Street from the newest fire house. I still think that idea is valid and is, in fact, strengthened by changing the fire house into City Hall. As one goes east on Market Street, see the Baptist Tabernacle building; it fits in scale with the fire house. It would make an impressive governmental campus while injecting life into that forlorn building.
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