Deena Winter: High-rise will just have to wait

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Whatever became of the mayor’s idea of building a high-rise downtown since her press conference in February?

Not as much as city officials had hoped.

Things are moving slower than planned because the city is waiting to send out its “request for proposals,” or RFP, until an alternative location is found for the Taste of China restaurant.

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The little family-owned Chinese restaurant is on the northeast corner of the block where the city would build a parking garage and private developers would top it with housing, offices or a hotel.

To clear the way for the high-rise, the city purchased the Star Ship 9 discount theater and the building that houses the Wasabi! Japanese restaurant, adjacent to the Taste of China.

But Taste of China co-owner Chan Hua has said all along that he won’t sell his building unless a suitable alternative location can be found, and that has proven difficult.

“He really doesn’t want to hold up the project,” said Steven Guittar, a real estate broker working with Hua. “We haven’t come to terms yet on a property we’ve been looking at… We’re all kind of waiting on a couple of developments.”

The City Council did not authorize the Urban Development Department to take the property by force through condemnation, which has slowed down a once-ambitious schedule.

The city originally intended to send out its RFP in May and have a redevelopment proposal ready for the City Council in July.

Jeff Cole of the Urban Development Department said the site is more attractive to developers if the city assembles all of the property before going out with the RFP.

“It continues to kind of drag on,” he said Tuesday.

Best-case scenario: The RFP will go out next month. Proposals may be taken for up to three months, Cole said, to allow local, regional and national developers adequate time to respond.

In the meantime

As you may or may not recall, hitched to the mayor’s high-rise proposal was a civic plaza on the opposite corner of the block, in what is now the vacant Douglas 3 theater.

The empty theater will have to be demolished to make way for the plaza, and demolition is set to begin no later than Oct. 2, Cole said, and be complete within 20 working days.

When the city bought the Star Ship 9 from Douglas Theatre Co., it also purchased the Douglas 3 for a total of $3.2 million.

The next step will be demolition of the Star Ship and Wasabi! early next year.

“Our hope is to have the site clean and ready for redevelopment in the spring,” Cole said.

The civic plaza would be bordered by a four- to five-story building filled with retail shops on the ground floor and possibly offices or housing on upper floors.

When Mayor Coleen Seng announced plans for the high-rise and civic square in February, she said plans for the civic square would begin after a developer was chosen. But now the city is moving forward with the civic square, despite uncertainty about how much tax increment financing the high-rise might generate to help build it.

Cole said a major public-private fundraiser is being planned to help with construction costs. Once the Douglas 3 is razed, the open spot will likely be used as a staging area for construction of the skyscraper, he said.

Casady declines

trip to China

In something of a show of solidarity, Lincoln Police Chief Tom Casady declined to join the local contingent now in China for a domestic violence conference.

Even though the trip wouldn’t have cost the city money, Casady’s employees haven’t been doing much traveling since Mayor Seng began restricting travel earlier this summer.

City employees are only allowed to travel for bare necessities such as certification, licensing or mandatory training. Exceptions must be approved by Seng’s office.

“I just couldn’t see myself going off on a trip of a lifetime because of my position as chief of police while the rest of my employees can’t even go to Grand Island,” Casady wrote in an e-mailed response to queries. “If it had been Denver, that would have been one thing, but 12 days in China was more than I felt comfortable with.”

The Chinese government and grants are paying for the trip attended by a dozen local officials, who will talk about Lancaster County’s coordinated response to domestic violence.

What would Casady have done in China?

“Eat extraordinary delicacies, and take in many breathtaking cultural, historical experiences, such as the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the terra cotta warriors, the Bund, and so forth,” Casady joked. “Oh, and present a paper on the police response to domestic violence.”

Casady wrote a paper and put together a Web site of references, but left the law enforcement role to Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner.

Casady said he received the “first installment of photos” from those who went to China, and “fittingly, they included a photo of themselves at the dining table laden with many dishes.”

Pick a bond issue,

any bond issue

City Councilwoman Robin Eschliman has been surveying Lincoln residents to find out what city projects, if any, they’d be willing to support paying for with a bond issue.

Among the options she gives: a maintenance facility for police vehicles, upgrade of the 911 radio system; repairs to Pershing Center; construction of a new convention center and arena; purchase of land for an industrial business park; construction of fire stations; construction of a fire training facility; repairs and modernization of swimming pools; renovations to Bennett Martin Library; repairs and construction of streets.

There’s also an option to say “none of the above” and a footnote allowing people to say they would withdraw their support if it cost them more than $(fill in the blank) per year.

Eschliman said she’s been handing out the unscientific survey at speaking engagements and public events, but has only gotten about 30 back so far, and those have been “real divided.”

Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.