A Rash of Renovations

It's now official.

The Plaza is being reconfigured.

No, this is not the doing of a City revisitation of the Downtown Plan, that citizen inspired document that morphed into a resume for a long-lost, though staff emulated, Department Head.

If you can't piece this together, just goose-step past the Perozzi Fountain in Lithia Park. The Idyllic baby exposed there is, according to local legend, none other than the likes of John Fregonese, whose mother starred in one of my favorite sci-fi thrillers, THIS ISLAND EARTH.

I'm glad that the City has chosen a large venue, unlike the council chamber, to hoist and host this sequel. During the many years that I owned the Historic Ashland Armory the City declined every and any free public usage of the building. Our Mayor, at that time, publicly bragged that he had never set foot into the building. That was when he was also Chairman of the Board for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This played, of course, a pivotal role, as that was about the time that the Festival felt the primeval call to expand to Portland, by "invitation."

That the Festival had been negotiating the design and use of the Portland Performing Arts Center was lost on our local reporting. Years later the Festival dropped Portland like a hot potato, yet not before the Historic Ashland Armory was denied any funding. The head of the Festival told me that a "regional" facility should be based in Medford, in a building owned by his long time friend, Otto.

Swell.

Ashland's economy is strangled and constricted because the Festival didn't want any competition.

The Armory had a State Grant for $500,000 set up by Lenn Hannon, though for reasons more symbolic than sincere. I used the State funded parking lot on Pioneer and Lithia Way as a grant match, this approved by the State's head of Economic Development. Our long-time City Administrator, loyal to the ways of the Festival, refused to sign a document to release the funds for many months, until catastrophic fires consumed the budget.

So, who won?

The Mayor protected the Festival.

The Administrator served his masters loyally.

The Senator got to slap the Admistrator with a cold cod, this for the fact that when the Senator worked for the Ashland Street Department, he was not allowed access to a phone during his lunch hour. Now there's a fat case for offering a half-million with no intention of delivering, this all just for show.

Bite Me!

Who lost?

The restaurants, retail businesses and general citizenry of Ashland. We now send the business to the Ginger Rogers/Craterian in Medford, perhaps in double effrontery to our local Meals Tax.

Be good and don't ask questions. Buy your Festival tickets in advance and stand in awe in the shadow of the Lenn and Dixie Hannon Library at Southern Oregon University.

The truth is between the lines.