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Introduction

Cheat Sheet

What's the masterplan?

What are these buildings going to look like?

Who's going to run all these things?

How are we going to pay for all this?

What's going to happen to Market Square?

How can the public give input? And who's listening?

Worsham and Watkins: Who are these guys?

Plan Map

The Cheat Sheet

Okay, here's the deal. There's a big new plan for downtown development. It was drawn up by the Public Building Authority and its consultants, developers Ron Watkins and Earl Worsham (for more on them, see Joe Sullivan's profile).

There's a lot of money involved—$130 million in public infrastructure on top of the $160 million already planned for the convention center—most of which is supposed to be recouped via a complicated sales tax mechanism that basically lets the city keep money that would normally go to the state. The PBA report makes assumptions about how much money all the associated private development would generate. The accuracy of those assumptions is pretty much impossible to determine.

As for that private development, it includes a two-story shopping mall bridging Henley Street, a big movie theater, a giant office tower ("skyscraper," if you prefer), a new hotel, some high-tech housing, and a big new downtown retailer. None of those deals are confirmed yet, but some of them are close. The biggest element is a possible E.W. Scripps center on the World's Fair Park that would combine HGTV, the Food Channel, and the Do-it-Yourself networks into a tourist attraction. Scripps executives are known to be interested, but they have yet to commit.

And are they—whoever "they" are in this context, which is a little hard to determine—really talking about a roof or a dome over all of Market Square? Yes, "they" are.

What happens now? The PBA board will take public input and then vote in March on the proposal. If they approve it, Worsham and Watkins will have a 90-day exclusive on doing the development. Then PBA will vote on the final Worsham Watkins plan this summer. If everything is approved, it will go to City Council for consideration. At the moment, nobody is terribly eager or able to answer specific questions about how the whole thing will fit together, who will run it, and what it will look like, although those decisions will all have to be made within a few months. The development is supposed to be done by the time the convention center opens in three years.

For more details on any and all of the above, see the accompanying map and stories.