January 2020

Was LifeScape’s street closure plan just a ploy to add value to the property?

l3wis January 16, 2020 7Comments

As we said when they lost that battle with the city council ‘Yes, Yes and Yes’.

So here is the news we expected to hear;

The new facilities will replace LifeScape’s 26th Street children’s specialty hospital, residential and school location. 

The children’s campus on 26^th street will eventually be sold, but that can’t happen until the new campus is fully functional. 

The project will require fundraising and infrastructure still needs to be done. While LifeScape ideally would like to be done in a few years, the entire campus could take up to five years, Watkins said.

The renderings shown in this piece were produced by the late architect Jeff Hazard before he passed away last year.

As suspected, these plans were probably already set in motion when they came to the council to ask for the street closure. See, the way the rules work is if a street is closed, the adjacent property owner (LifeScape, in this instance) gets possession of the property at NO cost. This of course increases the value of the property. Billion Auto pulled this trick a few years back, except they still own the property where the street used to be.

It pains me that a non-profit that employees great people, does great things in our community and is a needed service would have people in leadership/management who felt they should try to manipulate the city council and an entire neighborhood for financial gains. Thanks to the insight and vision of 3 councilors (Brekke, Starr and Stehly) and countless citizens in the neighborhood that pushed back, this financial windfall at the expense of taxpayers and people living in the neighborhood never happened. If you want our money, just ask. I often expect people to conduct their private business and non-profits with integrity, but especially organizations that help the disabled.