Not long ago – only about two years ago, I wouldn’t wonder – Whitewater, Wisconsin was getting ready for a retail plaza and green grocer on the east side of town.
It’s been green (and brown) in the time since, as the area’s still just an empty lot.
We did build – as a transportation requirement – a lovely roundabout in front of the lot. Passing motorists can drive around, and around, the erstwhile site of proposed retail establishments.
Millions that might have gone to that project will go to an Innovation Center and Tech Park, not far away. Where only two years ago we heralded a future of retail, now the future is technology. One might wonder about the switch from one Next Big Thing to another, when they are so very different.
Whitewater’s small-town planners can’t make up their minds: rock star or brain surgeon?
Can they be blamed? A few million in grants here, a few million more in bonds there, and suddenly everyone’s on the cutting edge of fusion, jet cars, or if we’re really lucky, carbonated beverages that never lose their fizz.
I am not sure, though, how innovative the Innovation Center will prove to be. There’s little innovation in the same old local dodge of tax money and public debt, with the benefits of the project to show up … at an undetermined time in the future.
Candidly, no one should be awed by a project that sounds grand, but seems less consequential with each, successive description.
It’s predictable that when someone suggests that the costs might exceed the gains, he might be branded backward, dull, or uncooperative. Actually, I’d just like to know if it will be worth all the cost, effort, stress, and fuss.
I suppose the Titanic, Ford Pintos, and Space Shuttles were innovations. I’d simply suggest that the resulting sinking and explosions might have justified a different investment.
We can be sure that we’ll build an Innovation Center in Whitewater. All the rest is uncertainty cloaked as vision, inspiration, and a future-oriented outlook.