There’ll be an open house next week to “celebrate” one of the most wasteful expenditures in recent civic memory, New Albany’s shiny new city hall.
Concurrently, I’ve been told that the last resident of Riverview Tower has left the structure (forcibly evicted, I hear), clearing the way for implosion. A luxurious new city hall will be occupied as Mayor Jeff Gahan’s war on public housing continues. “Liberal” and “progressive” supporters of the mayor are as yet silent as to the sewer-gas optics of this juxtaposition, secure in the belief that no matter how badly elected Democrats behave, they cannot be worse than Republicans.
Whatever gets you through the night, rubes.
While I’ve retired from active participation in grassroots journalism, openly acknowledging the necessity of doing so in the face of reprisals from New Albany’s governing elites, the archives pertaining to the Reisz Mahal remain fully accessible. As the old song lyric goes, “they can’t take that away from me.”
Interested readers might have searched these posts separately, but I’ve gathered most of them them here, in one place, and in chronological order.
You’ll notice that my assessment of he project’s final cost kept escalating. This was not a rhetorical flourish. It represented our best guesstimates in the absence of transparency on the part of municipal government. I sincerely believe that when all is said and done, the new city hall (Reisz Mahal) will cost somewhere around $15 million. I’d like to be mistaken, but doubt I am.
Looking back on the work I was doing in 2018 about the Reisz Mahal boondoggle, one thing is clear: we lapped the News and Tribune’s sniveling and sycophantic coverage.
I’m very, very proud of that.
TUESDAY, MAY 08, 2018
Throwing Reisz: The Jeff M. Gahan Luxury Government Center keeps the emphasis on buildings, as opposed to people.
TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2018
ON THE AVENUES: Histrionic preservation? $8.5 million to gift Jeff Gahan with a new city hall “want” is inexcusable and simply obscene in a time of societal need.
TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2018
Truth is stranger than fact: Back in 2012, the Reisz building was to become a senior living complex. Bob Caesar kneecapped it — and Deaf Gahan DISAGREED with Cee-Saw.
THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 2018
ON THE AVENUES: Government Lives Matter, so it’s $10,000,000 for Gahan’s luxury city hall clique enhancement. Happy dumpster diving, peasants!
TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 2018
Jeff Gahan handed Denton Floyd $750,000 to kick-start the Reisz project. Where are the documents detailing this transaction?
THURSDAY, JUNE 28, 2018
ON THE AVENUES: Said the spider to the fly — will you please take a slice of Reisz?
THURSDAY, JULY 05, 2018
ON THE AVENUES: For Deaf Gahan and the Reisz Five, their luxury city hall will prove to be a Pyrrhic victory.
SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2018
Red has-beens and Reisz: “Seeing the beauty in Ukraine’s Soviet architecture.”
THURSDAY, AUGUST 08, 2019
Follow the change order money, ‘cuz Deaf Gahan needs the Reisz Mahal finished before the anticipated re-enthronement.
Addendum: The Reisz Mahal was approved, then the situation became tragically hilarious later in 2018 when the Moser Tannery, another and far more genuine historic property, met with a prolonged and painful demise by fire. Team Gahan’s “safeguarding” of the site should have been pilloried by historic preservationists, who found their lips oddly sealed after hopping into bed with the mayor on the city hall project.
Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent, suckers. I know you meant well, but getting taken to the cleaners, fleeced and spit-roasted by Boss Hogg doesn’t look on the ol’ CV, does it?
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2018
Look what the great historic preservation savior Jeff Gahan has done to the Moser Tannery building.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29, 2018
Barksdale made HIS bad choice, and now it’s unlikely the Moser Tannery can survive any more of Deaf Gahan’s tender loving care.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2018
The willfully neglected Moser Tannery died so the Reisz Mahal luxury municipal HQ might live.
