Short and sweet: The real purpose of MILUP

Below is the short-and-sweet version of my explanation of why the Mud Island Land Use Plan (MILUP) is bound to disappoint many of its public participants. (The long version is here.)

Continues...

• The RDC has a contract with the City to be the exclusive developer for the riverfront, including Mud Island River Park.
  
  
• The basis for this contract is the 2002 Cooper Robertson Riverfront Master plan.
  
  
• The land bridge (and lake) in that plan turned out to be very bad ideas.
  
  
• The land bridge was quietly taken out in 2005.
  
  
• That effectively gutted the plan, making it obsolete and irrelevant.
  
  
• If we admitted it and just threw plan away, we’d be admitting the RDC itself is obsolete and irrelevant.
  
  
• (Not to mention incompetent, for proposing the land bridge in the first place.)
  
  
• Jobs must be saved. Reputations must be preserved.
  
  
• The RDC must come up with a new master plan before contract renewal.
  
  
• The Mud Island Land Use Plan (MILUP) will arrive in time to save their contract.
  
  
• To be credible, MILUP must involve the public in a “process” of some kind.
  
  
• To avoid tying RDC's hands, MILUP can’t be too specific.
  
  
• To be legally sufficient, MILUP need be little more than a zoning map.
  
  
• When the public finds out they are getting little more than a zoning map, they will feel like they have been used.
  
  
• They have been.
  
  
• You won't be getting a skatepark, but maybe your children will.

Further readings

• The long version.