Last week, 700 people attended a public workshop held to determine how the state should spend $200 million on downtown Albany.
That’s an impressive and hope-generating turnout, even if we presume that some portion of the Albany Capital Center crowd was required to attend by their government employers. It demonstrates the depth of love and concern for the city, the passion that exists for bettering its future.
Given that the audience also included Mayor Kathy Sheehan and many other state and local politicians, it might have been easier for Ben Margolis of MIG, the planning firm hired to help guide the spending, to stand up and sugarcoat the state of the city and its downtown. Instead, he was blunt about its failures…