Coming to You Live from the Cancerous Armpit of the Inner City …

The list of descriptions for Southwest Richardson continues to grow. Southwest Richardson is a cancer of the city. Southwest Richardson is this or that. Now, Southwest Richardson is part of “an inner city” according to Laura Maczka.

From Amir's latest mailer

 

I remember being told about a meeting Gary Slagel attended. One of the city staff referred to Richardson as an “inner ring suburb”. I was told Slagel got read faced, popped his top and demand that staff never again be referred to as such a thing. Apparently it didn’t really matter whether it was true or not, he just didn’t want staff referring to it as such. It seems Laura has come up with another description that would set off Slagel again.

Southwest Richardson is a cancer. In various ways I have heard southwest Richardson referred to in this manner. Probably it was most heard from Barry Hand and Andrew Laska, presidents of Richardson Heights and Cottonwood Heights.

The southwest portion of Richardson has deteriorated much over the past few decades. It seemed that southwest Richardson was on a completely ignore list at City Hall. I don’t know the whole story to it, but Barry and Andrew worked hard to get the city council’s attention and worked to stop the spread of blight. If anyone deserves any credit at all for the change in direction it is Barry, Andrew and those that worked with them to set out a new vision, an improvement for this section of the town. It seemed the city council had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, away from their previous attitude of ignoring this part of town. It is very easy to see who the leaders were and who the reluctant followers were.

Another interesting development, in recent years the city staff and city council have taken kindly to the notion that in Richardson we need to stack ‘em and pack ‘em. We need high density living. There are some people who seem to want to do away with the leisurely life style of single family home communities. They want everyone to ride public transportation, ditch personal vehicles for travel and have everything you could want within walking or public transportation distance. That is an idea I am completely mystified by.

Apparently there are some disturbing things (at least I think they are disturbing) some people would like to see come to Richardson. On a Facebook page John Murphy said something that startled me. He expects to see 10 or 20 story apartment buildings for apartments at the DART station just west of the Spring Valley station.

Maybe Laura Maczka is onto something we don’t know about yet: Richardson is going to try and become Texas’ Manhattan or what Detroit use to be, an inner city. As for wanting to become an inner city, what has happened to an inner city 40 or 50 years later? How is that working out for Detroit? No so good apparently, unless you consider blight a good thing.

 My seeing the future the future of Richardson and what I would want Richardson to be does not include becoming like the big cities up north where there are far too many people living too closely to each other. I enjoy being able to drive across Richardson in a car and go where I want with ease. It is freedom to me. Being stuck with only buses and trains for transportation is not what I envision for Richardson future.

Brick Row was built with city funds and private funds. Probably the reason for the use of city funds was that if it were to be built with only private funds, no one would build it. And as it turns out, Brick Row was nothing close to a success. For it to have been a success project, claims John Murphy, it would have had to have higher density. Some people want high density, some people don’t, myself included. Traffic is already bad enough, water is already on short supply and from what the candidates are saying, this time, water rationing is not going to ever go away. High density seems to add to the problems.

Just in case you have not seen the video of the council meeting where the topic of direct election of the mayor came up, here is a video of the discussion. It might be worth asking yourself who is for positive change and allowing the resident of Richardson a choice in their future, and who wants to hold back the residents and limit their choices.