January 24, 2008

Skybridge

Think you all remember that I was against this since the whole "DIF" financing concerns me. Only increased state revenues stay with the City of Worcester. In other words if the Commonwealth Tax Revenues did not increase enough to cover the cost of the Skybridge, the remaining monies due on the bond would need to come from the General Fund (us).

This past week-end I stayed at the Copley Marriott. I gave my car keys to the valet, when arrived on Saturday. On Monday my car back was returned when I gave my ticket to the valet.

It is great there. The mall is right off the second floor so you never even have to go outside. There is even a Skybridge that connects you to the Prudential, more stores, food court, SkyWalk at the top of the Prudential and the Prudential T Stop. All the time again you never have to go outside.

Every time I was on the Skybridge, it was packed. This got me to thinking, who would have been on our Skybridge that connected a parking garage and a hotel??? It would have been empty 99% of the time.

My point is that you can have valet parking between the hotel and the garage, there is no need of a Skybridge here. The intent, highest and best use of a Skybridge is to connect retail buildings, not parking garages.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bill, wasnt the skybridge supposed to connect the new hotel with DCU Center?

Aside: How much did the City strong arm DCU to lend to TiNovos back when TiNovos had bought the Grand Hall which was also the same time DCU was vying for naming rights to the Centrum.
$1.25M or $1.75 M comes to mind???? If the above amts are correct, I guess those naming rights are now coming with an add'l cost (loan write off) of at least $500,000

File under: Subprime

Bill Randell said...

Jahn:

Now that you say it, wasn't there suppose to be two Skybridges? Think one from the Hotel to DCU amd the other from the Hotel to the paring garage.

Same premise exists, however, the Skybridges would in essence be empty alot, if not most of the time.

Anonymous said...

Skybridge. Perhaps when the number of folks crossing the streets in the area in question increases to 'more than a few' then we can try and spend someone's tax dollars to keep them warm and dry- or cool and dry. I hope not mine. A well planned tunnel would have been cheaper and better.But we have all seen what happens when a big tunnel is planned....

Anonymous said...

The Copley skybridge was built with PRIVATE money. The only reason for its existance is that the project's developers knew that many of thier customers would be run over every day - not good for business. The Huntington Ave traffic count is phenominal. You could literally lie down in the middle of the street where the proposed Worc. skybridge would go and be perfectly safe.

Dave from Worcester said...

maybe they havent started the second part of the skybridge yet?