City Council Members Briefed On Downtown Development

Local Eyes says:

“Downtown Bridgeport needs more critical mass/human beings/economic activity/housing and pizzazz.
What’s good for downtown Bridgeport is good for anyone who reads this blog.”

Absolutely true, Local Eyes. But the approach to achieving critical mass (for downtown economic viability) has occurred/is occurring without any apparent awareness of just how large “critical mass” must be in order to create downtown viability for Bridgeport. Somewhere the baseless/inaccurate assumption was made that building a few thousand units of housing for commuting labor would be the key to creating a sustaining environment for significant, downtown retail/entertainment/commercial development…

History, and the examples of other cities that have experienced significant economic progress/downtown revitalization, should have been enough of a guide to inform city planners/developers/investors that a large, Bridgeport-based, regional pool of employed consumers with identifiable/measurable disposable income, is the key to any downtown resurgence.

Downtowns, as such, don’t exist as “residential neighborhoods” (see definition, “downtown”, Merriam Webster dictionary); they exist as the “central business-commercial/entertainment-hospitality districts” of municipalities, with an only nominal residential aspect (in relative terms).

There will never be any “downtown” revitalization in Bridgeport, nor any other other form of significant, lasting, revitalization, until there is full employment of the Bridgeport populace at living-wage jobs. This latter condition will provide an economic environment that can support the advantageous/synergistic location of a variety of commercial/retail/entertainment-hospitality venues in the city’s downtown such that the overall city/downtown environment will become hospitable/inviting to a regional mass of consumers that will allow sustainable economic expansion of the commercial/retail/arts-entertainment-hospitality sectors of the downtown and larger aspect of Bridgeport in a manner that is describable as a full socioeconomic revitalization of the city…

There cannot be an essentially-jobless revitalization of the downtown and larger aspect of the city of Bridgeport. Creating a residential (gentrified) island of prosperous commuters in downtown Bridgeport (that is expected to serve as the leading edge of returning prosperity), while there is massive joblessness and underemployment, and otherwise low-wage employment, with respect to most of the populace, has proven to be a fool’s errand — with respect to the grand idea hatched by the “planners,” developers, and “business experts” involved with the decades-long, failed efforts to revive Bridgeport’s downtown.

And despite the obvious ridiculousness of the the notion that such an approach to revitalization can accomplish such in any meaningful, sustainable way, there continues to be a courtship of “developers” by the city, state, and federal governments, in the context of the cumulative waste of hundreds of millions of dollars — perhaps approaching a billion dollars(!) — of grants, forgivable loans, tax credits, and contra-indicated development prerogatives, in pursuit the creation of a downtown, commuter neighborhood for already-employed out-of-towners that have no real investment in Bridgeport’s long-term socioeconomic health and well-being… (And, indeed, it should be realized that all of the jobless, “tax-negative,” downtown housing crowds-out much of the potential “tax-positive,” jobs-rich, commercial development that true revitalization indicates…)

Of course, we must recall the “One Coast, One Future” red-herring, regional development plan that designates Bridgeport as the “housing hub” for Fairfield County/the Region. This, of course has proven to mean a legitimized role for Bridgeport as the regional repository for all untaxable/undesirable development in Fairfield County, as well as its dormitory/cheap-labor repository (an economically-stultifying, unsustainable, fiscally-fatal role)… So there is a “method to the madness” involved in Bridgeport’s government-funded, downtown, “revitalization.” It allows the continued prosperity of the regional suburbs/down-county towns, at Bridgeport’s expense/continued socioeconomic decline… (Which will ultimately lead to extreme socioeconomic damage to the region, as the Bridgeport, “red-giant” socioeconomic-implosion debris engulfs and destroys the region — to use an astronomical analogy…)

But the government-promoted manipulation/abuse of Bridgeport will continue — under the guise of “smart-growth” redevelopment — as long as connected/shrewd/shady housing and infrastructure developers, as well other, gullible/delusional (or highly-subsidized) commercial-sector developers continue to line up for the opportunity to feed at the taxpayer-funded, Bridgeport “development trough”, as promoted by short-sighted, elitist, regional political interests…

So: how many Bridgeport City Councils have to be “briefed” (while politically-prostrated) over how many decades before one of them has enough informed, reality-based members to realize that the city is “developing” toward total socioeconomic implosion and must abandon its current, jobless redevelopment approach and radically redesign its redevelopment strategy (in the context of political rebellion against the state/region) to assume a full-employment-at-living-wage-jobs format?!…

Don’t expect much from this City Council, which is perhaps, collectively (minus a handful of silenced exceptions), the worst in the city’s history (working with its most inept, unfocused, uncommitted administration, ever (again, with a sprinkle of mid-/lower-level exceptions)…