The city council voted 6-1 on Tuesday to allocate $4.2 million toward a review of the Riverside Corridor Revitalization Project, which has existed in some form since 2019 and which no one present could remember signing up for.
"We need to determine whether the project is still a project, or whether it has evolved into something else entirely," said Councilwoman Patrice Dolan, who introduced the measure. "At a certain point, you're not managing a project. You're managing the memory of a project."
The original scope called for a mixed-use development along six blocks of the riverfront. Since then, the project has undergone four rebrandings, two environmental assessments that concluded absolutely nothing, and the hiring of a consulting firm that was later hired by a different consulting firm to evaluate the first consulting firm's findings.
Mayor Tom Aldiss, the lone dissenting vote, called the funding "a bold step toward clarity." He then left for a ribbon-cutting at a parking garage that has been under construction since 2021, because apparently progress is relative.
The review is expected to take 18 months and will produce a 200-page report, which will itself require a follow-up review. The first phase begins in September, assuming the project office on Elm Street still has working heat and someone remembers the password to the shared drive.
