There’s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding Hawks stadium recently, mostly coming from Meridian. I have to hand it to Mayor DeWeerd and the Meridian Development Corporation: they have a vision, and a mission and they are going after it.
This morning the Boise Hawks unveiled a survey that showed a vast majority (75%+) of the 300 people surveyed, favored construction of a new multi-purpose sports facility somewhere in the Valley. It turns out that a plurality of people also identified MERIDIAN as the favored location for a new sports facility. I am guessing that this will have a few people at the City of Boise upset.
In January 2007, a design charrette for the 30th District Master Plan in Boise, revealed that the 200 people in attendance hoped that a new Hawks stadium would be built in downtown Boise. The photo below appears on page 185 of the 30th Street Master Plan, available on the City’s website.
Hawks Stadium envisioned as part of the 30th Street Neighborhood
So what say you, City of Boise officials? Are you working up a deal to make the stadium a centerpiece of a new 30th Street Neighborhood? The implementation plan for 30th Street says that within 1-3 years Boise City and CCDC will:
Identify where land assembly, land acquisition and/or development partnerships would help implement the development concept for each subdistrict. Initiate conversations with property owners to determine their level of interest in selling property, land assembly and/or development.
Where are we on this project? Granted the plan only went forward in June 2009, but with Meridian breathing down your necks, it might be time to kick this project into high gear - unless you really like the sound of “MERIDIAN HAWKS.”
Tags: 30th Street, Baseball, Boise, Hawks, Meridian
Development, Economic Development, Economy, Fun, Government, Infrastructure | admin March 10, 2010 | 
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In my new favorite blog from Stanford Economist John B. Taylor we get a great dose of reality about the value of ideas. In a great blog post responding to the charge that Chicago School economists wrecked the economy, Professor Taylor shows graphically how that charge simply cannot be true. The graph below shows the number of University of Chicago, Harvard, and MIT economists on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers:
The only question I had after viewing the graph was, “well, yeah, but what about other policy makers?” He answers that too:
The data are robust when you look beyond the CEA to other top posts normally held by PhD economists. All assistant secretaries of Treasury for Economic Policy appointed during the Bush 43 and Obama Administrations had PhDs from Harvard. During the same period, all chief economists appointed to the IMF had PhDs from MIT, and, except for Don Kohn, who was promoted from within and Susan Bies who was appointed as a banker, all PhD economists appointed to the Federal Reserve Board were from Cambridge MA.
So the crash? Blame it on Harvard.
Veritas.
The inaugural urban lunch was a big success with well over 100 people showing up to hear City of Boise Economic Development Director Cece Gassner talk about the street car proposal. If you missed it, Nate Hoffman at the Boise Weekly has been doing great work covering the streetcar. The image above links to the piece about Urban Lunch. He also wrote a GREAT piece on the various TIGER grants that Idaho has out there, and another piece on where the City and CCDC plan to get the rest of the dough to build the streetcar in the event that they are TIGER recipients. I’ll be blogging more about the streetcar following some bizarre conversations I’ve had about it recently.
For now, I just want to thank Sherry McKibben, Lindsay Dofelmier, Ashley Ford, Melissa Lavitt (my boss at BSU), Jenny’s Lunch Line, Idaho TechConnect and Krissa Wrigley, and Dave at Phy.La Design. It took the work of a lot of dedicated volunteers to make this successful - not the least of who was all the people who showed up. Thanks too to NPR who did a nice story, and Zach at the Idaho Business Review (but where’s the story, man?).
Next month we’re slated for the Urban Lunch January Edition, scheduled for noon on Wednesday January 20th, at the Water Cooler. Tentatively speaking is City of Boise Comprehensive Planning Manager Patricia Nilsson giving an update on Blueprint Boise - or what the City envisions land use and development to look like for the next decade. RSVP to the event on the Urban Lunch Facebook page.
I’m launching a new series where I challenge the ideas of the most preeminent scholars in the world. No, I’m not gonna fight guys like Paul Krugman who aren’t really scholars anymore, I mean the real intellectual heavyweights - the people whose reasoning is beyond reproach.
Next week I’ll take on Richard Florida and the metrics behind his Creative Class Index, specifically how he measures “innovation.” After that I’m gonna tee up famous Harvard economist Edward Glaeser and his views of where we should build rail, and finally I’ll take on reknowned urbanist Chris Nelson about where growth might actually occur on the Snake River Plain.
You don’t get to be a thought-leader by being wrong often and these guys are the best of the best. So, let’s have some fun, and create some conversation. If you find something of interest out there by one of the nation’s leading intellectuals, send it my way and we’ll see what kind of debate we can get going.
A bunch of people have asked me about the New Belgium bicycle bar hop through Boise this weekend, so here are the details from Mulligan’s owner Alicia Wagner:
Saturday (July 25, 2009) starting at noon at The Dutch Goose, also going to Emerald Club, Graineys, Parilla, Mack & Charlies and ending at Mulligans from 5:45 to 7:00 New Belgium Brewery is having a 6 bar bike tour. We will ride from bar to bar and each bar will have specials on a different New Belgium Brewery product and games etc. and then you have a chance to win a New Belgium Cruiser bike and prizes at Mulligans at the awards ceremony. Some bars are decorating and we will pick up people along the way. Feel free to dress up or just dress casually in order to stay cool (it is going to be hot!!!) and meet us at Dutch goose or if you just want to join us at Mulligans for some mini bike races we will be there at 5:45!
Sunday at Noon at Legends (the old “sports” next to Edwards) Kris and Matt (New Belgium rep) are having a sand volleyball tournament. It is 4 man teams. Come sign your team up or just show up and they will put you on a team. If you don’t want to play come visit them and have a beer! Prizes and giveaways will be given away!
If you are looking to partake in more beverages afterwards we will also be having our Mulligans end of season pool tournament all day Sunday. Come visit us!!!
