It Coulda Been a Showplace, Part 1

The Germans, or at the time the West Germans,were especially devastated by President Kennedy's assassination. Just days after the tragedy in Dallas, they renamed a famous public square after the fallen hero, and commemorated John F. Kennedy Platz.
To my young ear, one unexposed to the German language,it sounded decidedly odd and a bit nefarious: "John F. Kennedy plots to do what?"

Many years later I was day dreaming of how I should deploy my winnings from a particularly large Power Ball pot, $200 million, I think. My active fantasy center provided for me a fully-formed gift to my hometown, along with the prospect of instant, altruistic, immortality.

The double-deck Municipal Parking Garage on the south side of Main Street, between Pearl and State Streets, was perhaps still functional but, and I believe honestly, in a state of "park-at-your-own-risk" decrepitude.

Downtown's current renaissance was still unrealized, yet widely longed-for.

My fantasy plan was to acquire the garage property from the City for very little money, and simply a promise to build something transformational for my hometown.

A plaza would slope gently upwards from Main Street to the top of the flood wall. The concrete plaza would serve as the roof to shops and restaurants built below. People walking down Pearl or the alley next to the South Side Inn would see numerous store fronts at street level. Restaurants could have beer gardens and patios on the plaza. I never noodled out the logistics of tables, chairs, and drivers sharing plaza space with cars. I just knew people like to eat and drink outside and look at the river.

As luck would have it, I had no luck. No luck, no dough. No dough, no go.

Thus was New Albany deprived the beneficence I hoped to deliver it.

Alas,I never built Gonder Platz.

So, here we are years later still, and now the question: whither Bobo Platz?

To be continued...