Thoughts on Rochester: Epic Fail

The biggest on-going news story during my time at the D&C was the utter failure of the Renaissance Square development project. It's a pretty good example of government just being unable to get out of its own way.

Renaissance Square was the code name for a city block in downtown Rochester that, to put it nicely, has seen better days. The city had plans to condemn the buildings, tear them down, and build a bus station/performance theater/new downtown campus for Monroe County Community College.

Yeah, I thought it was an odd combination of things too, but just go with it, okay?

The idea was originally conceived in the late 1990s, but never went anywhere. It was brought up a few times since then, but it never got very fair on those occasions either. Finally, with the hope of getting Federal Stimulus Money (good for whatever ails ya!) this summer to offset the cost of the project, it looked like "RenSquare" would finally be a reality.

Of course, all that sounds good on paper. Actually it sounds like $20 million on paper, which is how much the city has spent on various designs, plans, and 'artist-rendered drawings' during the past decade.

In reality, the city and the county could never agree on a few relatively minor details - such as how many bays there should be for buses to pull up to - and the project was changed so many times that they actually missed the deadline (at the end of July) for getting it approved for the Federal funding that was available.

So the money went somewhere else.

So Renaissance Square won't be built.

So that block along Main Street will remain as sad and empty as before.

Actually, it will be a little sadder and emptier. Before the plan had collapsed, the city told the few business that do operate within that block that they should prepare to be closed down when the buildings got condemned (which was the plan). So those businesses held clearance sales and prepared to move or close or whatever. Unfortunately, now that the plans have fallen through, most of them are too far along the going-out-of-business road to turn around. They have little choice but to actually go ahead and close up or move elsewhere.

It bears repeating: They spent $20 million and got nothing but some nice drawings of what could have been.

Epic Fail, Rochester. Epic Fail.