EDITORIAL: Bridge to nowhere
The city of Las Vegas is convinced that if it keeps spending money on Symphony Park infrastructure, it will get precisely the kind of development its downtown planners covet.
That development hasn‘t happened yet, so to further entice builders -- put on your shocked face -- the city is prepared to build a pedestrian bridge where there isn‘t pedestrian traffic.
As reported Tuesday by the Review-Journal‘s Knowles Adkisson, the city could spend up to $9 million on a bridge that spans railroad tracks and connects a parking lot at Ogden Avenue and Main Street to the north part of vacant city land in Symphony Park. Apparently, it wasn‘t enough to spend $4.5 million on a pedestrian bridge that connects a city-owned parking garage at Main and Clark Avenue to The Smith Center for the Performing Arts parking lot -- a bridge almost no one uses.
Recall that the city this year also approved a $25 million, 1,200-space Symphony Park parking garage, even though there‘s no demand for it.
"If you build it, they will come" works in the movies, but it‘s foolishly risky public policy. If the city is determined to build new pedestrian bridges, how about putting them in places where they’re needed right now?
The city has more than $100 million in debt tied to Symphony Park infrastructure. That‘s too much already. We don‘t need another bridge to nowhere.
