"The Primal Scream of Suburbia"

Eric Nicholson nails it in Unfair Park: "The Opposition to New High-End Apartments in Richardson is the Primal Scream of Suburbia."

Eric Nicholson just saved me the trouble of blogging about the public hearing before Richardson's City Plan Commission (CPC) regarding the proposed Palisades Village development.

After the jump, some speculation and gaming this out.

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The CPC public hearing didn't show off Canyon Creek in a good light, or by extension, Richardson. The nastier the opposition to Palisades Village gets, the worse Richardson will look.

I don't know who tipped Eric Nicholson off about something happening in little old Richardson. Unfair Park rarely ventures north of IH 635. Was developer JP Partners behind the tip? If so, then it may be a sign that they know how bad the public hearing makes Richardson look and, by publicizing it, they hope the city will publicly stand up for the project. Or was one of the neighborhood opponents behind the tip, maybe thinking that apartments, any kind of apartments, are so self-evidently awful that getting the word out will help kill the project. If so, they didn't figure that their own words might not sound to Unfair Park like reasoned arguments but instead like a "primal scream."

Assuming that Richardson's business establishment wants this development, Mayor Laura Maczka is going to have to act like she personally wants it and start selling it to the city at large and Canyon Creek in particular. If she tries to stay neutral, the project won't be shaped into something great. Lacking a champion, it'll more likely just die. And with it will die a little bit of Richardson's future growth. That won't be good for either the city or the Canyon Creek neighborhood, either now or thirty years down the road.