Part the First

You may have seen this mornings Post-Standard article on David Garber, an attorney with the firm Mackenzie Hughes who is advising the city the mayor on matters related to DestiNY USA.

Among Destiny's lawyers: the Mackenzie Hughes law firm.

A quiz: Why does Garber say he doesn't have a conflict of interest? Is it:

(a) The mayor and Destiny execs have given him the verbal go-ahead
(b) Not only does he not know how much the city is paying Mackenzie Hughes for his time, he's not taking any of that money for himself
(c) a and b

If you said (c), give yourself a subpoena and a pat on the back!

(a) Is it possible that two different lawyers from one law firm could represent both sides in a case and not talk to each other about it? Absolutely, especially if the firm is big enough. Garber is one of 32 attorneys listed on the Mackenzie Hughes web site. It's not exactly the Hud. But is there always going to be the appearance of impropriety? Absolutely, especially to a public paying a couple of hundred dollars an hour.

(b) If Garber is going to take any money from Mackenzie Hughes (and I can't imagine he's skipping his paychecks), how can he be sure it's not coming from the city – or, worse, from Destiny? Worse, because he's taking money from the people on the other side in the case. As I understand it, checks come in, get deposited, and then paychecks get written. You really can't claim to work for the business and at the same time claim not to take money from its clients.

And for as guilty as Garber is in this case, the fault really lies with the mayor, who can't possibly think this even looks clean.

Part the Second

I nearly dropped my coffee this morning as I walked past the pile of New Times near the shop's door. The cover story is an interview with Bob Congel as to what Destiny is and why we need it. You'll want to read the whole piece, but there are a couple of things that absolutely need discussion.

First off, there's the assertion that Destiny would create 68,000 jobs at an average of $75,000 a year. My calculator might be broken, but it says that's $5,100,000,000 in salaries a year. That means Destiny would have to bring in $5.1 billion a year just to cover salaries. Not benefits, not light bulbs, not small repairs to the infrastructure, not gas for the buses that will have to shuttle people from the parking lot to the complex, not toilet paper – and this assuming that 100 per cent of the energy is generated onsite through green technology, and I definitely have my doubts about that.

This, I'm just going to drop in verbatim:

Q: The major criticism of your Destiny project seems to be that it is constantly changing and you can't be pinned down about the exact details of your vision. Is that a fair criticism?

A: That's not only fair, but it's accurate. We spent a major part of our life figuring out how to make this better for the community, how to draw more people to it. Our goal is to draw visitors.

Let me translate: So there's thing, and we need to build it, now. But we don't know what it is. It keeps changing. It always has. The main thing is, we need to approve the concept so that whatever we decide it's going to be on the day that we start digging up earth, that's what it'll be, until we change our minds again.

If this is going to actually be a public project, there has to be a public process. And that means public input and firm plans and all that good stuff.

Congel goes on to say in the piece that 50,000 people a day will visit Destiny, and 95 per cent of them will be from out of the area. That means that of this market's nearly a million people, only 2,500 people a day will visit. That's fewer than visit the current mall that sits on that site. So not only does this "public" project not involve the public in its planning, it doesn't even involve the public as a target customer.

Part the Third

And now for the good news.

Back in February, the New York State Canal Corporation, a division of the Thruway Authority, told Destiny to shit or get off the pot with development of the Inner Harbor. In 2002, Destiny submitted the favored proposal: they'd buy the harbor property and drop about $260 million in development there – including a 600-room hotel – as part of the DestiNY USA project. The Canal Corp. earlier this year threatened to look for a new developer.

Today, the Canal Corp. gave Destiny an ultimatum: By next Thursday, put a $1.8 million deposit on the property and sign papers saying you'll reimburse us for an environmental study, and by August 14 (the following Monday), get the ball rolling on the environmental study, or you're off the project.

I was rather upset that the Canal Corp. had taken this long after its threats earlier this year to finally start backing those threats up. But in retrospect, it's a work of genius. There have been quite a few really successful events at the Inner Harbor this year, and if it turns out Destiny doesn't want it, someone else surely will.

Developers already know that Baltimore's Inner Harbor is an enormous tourist attraction that also manages to bring in locals for ice skating, concerts, the local aquarium, and plenty of restaurants that aren't all chains. And without investing tons of money in marketing and no money at all in development this year, Syracuse has shown it can get people down to the Inner Harbor for events. Imagine if there were day-to-day things to do there – and then if there were a rich development firm marketing it as an attraction both locally and afar.

Wow. I think I just wet myself.