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Does recently announced delay of the Wausau Center project make you optimistic or pessimistic about downtown?
Have your say in this reader poll
I received some interesting feedback in response to my latest story about the downtown Wausau Center mall redevelopment project, both offline and online.
A couple of folks (some connected to the project, some not) accused me of being overly negative.
As I said to some of them, it’s a journalist’s job to be critical, especially of those in power, and even moreso those using city money, regardless of the form. I think I’ve done plenty to point out the positive as well, and I always aim to be fair.
But as I’ve always told sources, “fair” doesn’t mean you’re going to like everything I write.
There’s an old saw of journalism: Journalism is by definition printing what someone doesn’t want to see printed.
While I don’t think that works as an absolute — stories about new businesses, for instance, are a net positive for everyone involved — there’s some truth to that.
But I wanted to get a sense of how people felt about downtown. I asked folks on my Facebook group about it. Now I’m asking you as well (and surely there is a lot of overlap, since I’m sure a portion of you are also on the Facebook group).
Below is the same poll I shared on the Facebook group. If you voted there, I would prefer you didn’t answer here because I plan to combine the results. But I will leave the comments open for this one, so everyone regardless of where you voted can feel free to reply.
Does recently announced delay of the Wausau Center project make you optimistic or pessimistic about downtown?
Wall’s record with Wausau is not encouraging. We should have had a more sound plan before the dozers went in. Whatever happened to the plan the urban planners from Michigan offered?
I believe the project will proceed following the delay, but in the interim, the temporary street project, based on the Toole plan that was done prior, the facade work on HOM Furniture and the Children’s Imaginarium are moving ahead. If I had to guess, I would also say that WOZ, and T Wall are clear that the council’s patience for more than one extension or more money is likely just not there. Of course, people can understand that the cost of materials, labor and interest rates are certainly way up this year, but we also want progress and new tax base there, and if that isn’t happening, the conversation will certainly need to shift to what, or who will be able to get to the place where we are achieving the goals. The key to generating traffic downtown in an environment where less people now need to spend every day in an office to do their work, is increasing the number of people who live down there, vs work down there. If we want to attract higher paying employers to create jobs here, there has to be skilled employees to fill them and places for them to live and recreate when they are not at work. This is why so many of the things cities, counties, business leaders and schools do are interrelated. There is a demand for units in the downtown area, and some of the newer ones are full or have wait lists, so there is certainly a market for it, in a mix of different age groups. While I think the delay is disappointing, I also don’t think it is a reason to make too many negative assumptions until we know more.