Author: hankkalet

According to The Wall Street Journal:

The now-empty, 4-acre Ferren Mall site will soon be torn down to make way for a mixed-use complex costing between $750 million and $1 billion that is intended to further overhaul the look of downtown New Brunswick.

The plans, according to the Journal call for a new complex that

would total 1.7 million square foot, with about 750,000 square feet of office space and between 500 and 600 apartments that would include both affordable and market-rate units. It also would have about 100,000 square feet of ground- and second-floor retail space.

 

“Modern corporate centers require places to live, entertainment venues, restaurants and shops to keep its workforce happy and accommodated,” in one central location, said Mayor Cahill. “The concept of leaving this city to work will be reversed.”

It is part of a larger redevelopment that also includes major changes on Rutgers’ College Avenue campus:

Just north of the train station, Rutgers is well under way with a $330 million redevelopment plan on its historic College Avenue campus. Also overseen by New Brunswick Development Corp., the project will include facilities for a new honors college as well as student housing and other classroom space. It also will feature a green plaza area with stores and a jumbo outdoor television screen.

 

Rutgers is one of the oldest schools in the nation and although the historic buildings make parts of the campus picturesque, a new academic building hasn’t been built on the College Avenue campus in about 50 years, said Anthony Calcado, vice president of university facilities and capital planning.

“We’re trying to target our investment so it makes a major impact for not just our students and faculty, but to those who are visiting the campus for the first time,” he said.

 

Other developments include the installation of bike lanes in and around the city, including one that will link the College Avenue campus with Douglass Residential College, another Rutgers unit that is a few miles away in New Brunswick. A number of residential projects by private developers for both students and area workers are also under way.

In other New Brunswick news this week:

From New Brunswick Today:

• Woman Who May Have Jumped From 12-Story NBPA Parking Garage Worked at RWJ Hospital

• New Brunswick to Remove Red Light Traffic Cameras This Year, At Least Temporarily

• Summer Marks Season of City Road Repairs After Rough Winter

• Woman Reportedly Shot Six Times in Front of Remsen Avenue House For Parolees

Chris Bosh seems a likeable and intelligent sort, and he’s certainly an underappreciated member of the Heat’s “Big Three.” But this quote from a story the other day (I just saw it) rankles me.

“I don’t think anybody really enjoyed this season like in years past,” Bosh told The Associated Press. “There was no, like, genuine joy all the time. It seemed like work. It was a job the whole year. Winning was just a relief. Losing was a cloud over us sometimes, and then we’d break out of it — and then go right back. But we got here. We had a chance. They were just better.”

I don’t think Bosh meant anything derogatory by the quotation — it was just an expression of his frustration after a terrible finals for his team — but it exhibits the same tone-deafness that Hillary Clinton demonstrated recently when she declared that she and former President Bill Clinton were “flat broke” when they left the White House. Bosh said the team’s efforts this past season — one in which the 30-year-old power forward earned $19 million, according to Basketball-Reference.com — “seemed like work.” It was unenjoyable, he said, difficult. It is not supposed to be like that.

Why not? He plays basketball for a paycheck — which fits the basic definition of work. For most of us, work is unenjoyable (I am lucky in this regard that I like what I do), difficult, a grind. It is a way to pay the bills and little more. Bosh’s comments indicate that he understands there is a difference between what the men outside my window are doing today — ripping up old sidewalks and curbing and pouring new concrete in 90-degree heat — and what he does, i.e., get paid an exorbitant sum to play a game. It’s just that what he does is not supposed to be like work at all and, when it is, well, it isn’t fun.

Again, I doubt any of this ran through Bosh’s mind at the time and I also doubt he has anything but respect for the people who do real work. He has been one of the more grounded people in sports for a long time. But his comments are consistent with those made by many who end up lucky enough to earn a large paycheck, which is why I brought up Clinton and her comments to Diane Sawyer. Here is what she said:

Well, if you — you have no reason to remember, but we came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt. We had no money when we got there and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea’s education, you know, it was not easy. Bill has worked really hard and it’s been amazing to me. He’s worked very hard, first of all, we had to pay off all our debts which was, you know, we had to make double the money because of obviously taxes, and pay you have at debts, and get us houses and take care of family members.

I have no reason to doubt her story’s accuracy — the Clintons may have been in debt, due to lawyers’ bills and other massive expenses — but its context. She was defending the speaking fees both she and her husband have earned over the last 14 years, time when she served as a high-profile U.S. senator and then as U.S. secretary of state and her husband had the cachet of being an ex-president and head of his own philanthropic organization. She may have been broke, but she walked out of the White House and into the Senate with an eye toward running for the presidency. Unlike most of us who are “piec(ing) together the resources for mortgages and houses,” she was connected. She was part of the American power structure. She was not at the whim of economic forces outside of her control. That’s why her comments struck such a nerve — or at least seemed to (there is no polling on this, admittedly, so the negative reaction may not be widespread). Her explanation, which was meant to show how much like the rest of us she is, ended up doing the opposite.

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I heard this striking poem this morning on the Poem-a-Day podcast. The poem, as Flynn states in his intro, creates a clash of perspectives that ultimately creates a single consciousness — which is something I’ve been striving for of late in my own work.

You can read the poem here, but I suggest also listening to the podcast (there is an audio player at the top of the poem) — Flynn’s voice adds to the poem, expands it in a way that I don’t think I can describe.

And then read the rest of his work on the Poetry Foundation site. He has one of the more compelling voices out there today.

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This sums up my feelings on anonymous sources pretty clearly. You use them when you have no other options, when it is absolutely essential that the information be release and when it the naming of the source might create legitimate safety, employment or other dangers for the source.

This is from New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan:

When sources are nameless, they are also unaccountable. There is no price for them to pay when they get it wrong. But readers — and The Times’s credibility — do suffer. And in some cases, so do the reputations of those The Times is writing about. No “walk-back story” can fix any of that.

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My latest from The Progressive Populist — on campaign finance rules.

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