Delay of Game for Green

It's a skeleton crew at City Council today – Sheryl Cole's off the dais all day, Mike Martinez has been coming and going, and Will Wynn is nowhere to be found as of this writing. So as you might guess, no major or contentious items are up for discussion today.

The bulk of this morning was spent discussing the city's decommission of the Green Water Treatment Plant Downtown, proposed future site of the new central library. The discussion gave council the opportunity to riff on ideas for the site. Brewster McCracken sounded like he was in favor of pushing the library site a block farther west, on the electrical substation block in between Green and the Seaholm site, and wanted developers to propose two models for the library: one free standing and the other incorporating – you guessed it – a vertical mixed-use design. Lee Leffingwell, noting the $90 million in bond bucks allocated for the library doesn't cover a complete build out, suggested future expansion and dictated it should be free-standing – drawing scattered applause from the library boosters in the room. Wynn talked parking; suggesting one massive, underground parking plain could cover the expanse of the entire four-block radius of Green; and serve as a base for development on the site – stopping short of a race of CHUDs or similarly superhuman underground molemen to punch your parking ticket.

But there was one unwelcome surprise: Due to the complexity and environmental challenges of the decommission project, it's going to take an additional 15 months, from November 2008 to February 2010.