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Monday, June 11, 2018

More critical analysis about tonight's update re the awful #YoungCircle Feasibility Study that'll make #HollywoodFL #traffic #business worse, NOT better ๐Ÿ˜ฎ


More critical analysis abt tonight's update re the awful #YoungCircle Feasibility Study that'll make #HollywoodFL #traffic #business worse, NOT better 

Updated June 12th, 2018 at 11:45 AM
For some reason, even after trying to fix it, after this was originally posted on Monday June 11th, some of the sentences are changing their fonts or sizes. I apologize for the look if after I re-edit this the gremlins pop-up again.
Want more examples of what's not working in Hollywood in 2018, especially in Downtown Hollywood? Of people in charge not paying attention or improving as they should? 
If so then you need to get yourself to tonight's meeting from 5:30 to 7:30 at the Lippman Center, 2030 Polk Street, an update on the preposterous Young Circle road project, because I have a very strong intuition that tonight will be such an example. 

A perfect example, actually, just like it was last year, when I attended the last in a series of public meetings hosted by the Hollywood CRA to try to sell Hollywood residents and Small Business owners on the idea of making what in my opinion would be a tragic mistake that will have long-term negative consequences for the city and Downtown Hollywood in particular.





I put the final touches to an important subject in an email that I've been meaning to share with you all for quite some time.

An email that I could have sent to you back in January or last month or last week and predicted with 100% certainty. Just as I was 100% correct last year when I wrote about what I saw and heard at the meeting that i'd shown up to with a great deal of trepidation. 
And then saw the same familiar faces saying the predictable things that gave me the trepidation in the first place.

The larger issue:
I personally don't believe that it's acceptable for highly-paid city employees or city agencies or city-funded groups, parties with access to lots of city-funded resources, to continue operating in a completely unsatisfactory way and specifically, acting like city residents, taxpayers and Small Business owners in the city won't eventually notice that they are being taken advantage of by being kept in the dark when it concerns something as fundamental as the usefulness and utility of US-1 as it intersects Young Circle and the Downtown Hollywood area. 
US-1/Federal Highway is the spine of Broward County and remains the main road that brings thousands and thouands of customers to the Downtown business area.
It's THE reason that they locate there!

The issue in question:
Where are the fliers for tonight's Young Circle meeting in storefront windows or bulletin boards of Young Circle and Downtown Hollywood businesses?
Where are ANY of the city's sandwich boards in Downtown Hollywood and in and around Young Circle ITSELF advertising this meeting about a proposal that will (negatively) affect Young Circle's future and the daily routine of residents?

Well, just like last year, those informational fliers and sandwich boards are NOWHERE to be found less than a week before the meeting tonight.
Or days before the meeting.
Or today.

Which is to say that there is NOTHING letting people visiting the park for last week's Food Truck Mondays or the Friday night Funtastic Friday family events and film that always draw a crowd, know anything about it in advance?

Instead, the public engagement relies on the same handful of people who are very interested in civic affairs here attending and saying everything is great and sounds great when common sense and first-hand observation tells us that's ridiculous.
And where's the diversity, especially the diversity of opinions from people throughout the area?

Last year I went to several popular and prominent businesses on Young Circle and Hollywood Blvd. the day after the last meeting that I had attended to speak to the owners/managers in order to find out from them if they knew anything about the series of meetings.
I didn't want to make the mistake of assuming they didn;t just because they didn't have anything posted at their business promoting the meetings, since it was always possible that they'd gone to a meeting that I hadn't attended. 

Nope, they didn't.
They knew nothing about the meetings.

I went to The Radius condominium, the largest concentration of Hollywood residents to Young Circle and spoke to the on-duty concierge and ten residents in the lobby over twenty minutes, asking them if they knew about it or had heard about any of the prior meetings.
ZERO AWARENESS.

Yes, there is clearly a problem with public outreach and engagement on this plan, so when are things actually going to change for the better?
Without that change, the results of any study involving this plan are completely invalid. 

If you had a business on or near Young Circle and hear that it will possibly be undergoing major construction for a lengthy period of time, why would you not get angry at the public access to your business being adversely affected? And you not having been in the loop when the decision was made?
Why would you want to stay in that area if the project actually decreases your business's opportunities if the proposed changes makes it more difficult for customers to get to your shop or restaurant?

But then I wrote all of this last year, didn't I? 
Yes I did, per the link below.

My critical lysis of awful #YoungCircle Roadway Feasibility Study that'll make #HollywoodFL #traffic worse, NOT better ๐Ÿ˜ฎ = coming soon. This week! 
In my opinion, it's not acceptable for highly-paid city employees or agencies with lots of city-funded resources to continue operating in a completely unsatisfactory way, acting like residents, taxpayers and Small Business owners of the city won't notice that they are being taken advantage of and being kept in the dark when it concerns something as important and fundamental as the usefulness of US-1 as it intersects Young Circle and the Downtown Hollywood area.

But it would have been just as true for promoting the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce's so-called "Spark" entrepreneur event, both last year and this year.
An event that because of my own personal interests and background, in any other situation, I should have not only been attending but promoting on this blog.
But I didn't.

Last year, a week before the event and in the days leading up to it, I made a point of looking for promotional info about it where the public in Hollywood might actually see it.
Even the minimum - what one might see if someone in your neighborhood was trying to find a missing dog.
But the Chamber of Commerce didn't even do that.
There was nothing.

Nothing anywhere visible to the public at The ArtsPark at Young Circle itself where the event was being held. Even the Park Rangers there knew nothing about it when I came by an hour before the event started. How can that be?

As it happens, last year I even took photos of the non-existent signs and sandwich boards, that is, took photos of the areas of ingress and egress to the park wher ethose should have been but weren't.
I don't post those incriminating photos here now because it'd be overkill.

So, where was the promotional effort?
How do you explain that kind of attitude? Two years in a row?
Sorry, simply having an event is not the thing as it running it correctly.

For those of you who are curious, just a little under 8,000 people read that post of mine re this state of disconnectedness to the public last year, which, while far from The Drudge Report daily reader numbers and not even in the top five of my most-popular blog posts of last year, are still considerably more than most of the blogs in South Florida, even ones connected to local newspapers or TV stations.
Just saying...

When you do not perform up to the standards that Hollywood residents and Small Business owners have a reasonable right to expect and demand, then you need to understand that there are necessarily going to be genuine consequences when people who care about the area decide to educate all the people who were not being kept in the loop.

So what's changed in the past year?
Well, if facts on the ground mean anything, nothing, so far as I or any other Hollywood resident can see for themself, based on a walk around the area in question last week, less than a week before tonight's event.
Why?

Why is CONTINUING to do such a completely inadequate job of properly informing Hollywood residents, businesses and stakeholders about a transportation plan that could drastically and adversely affect them, their 
Quality of Life, and their financial bottom line, so acceptable to the Hollywood CRA, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Hollywood City Commission?
It shows a real and continuing lack of insight about human behavior and failure to learn from experience, factors which continue to plague Hollywood and Broward County in the year 2018.

It's not my job or your job to do Hollywood CRA Executive Director Camejo's job or that of his staff -all of whom are well-compensated- for free. Period.
We have a right to expect much better than this.

Dave 

Snapchat: SoBeHoosier

This info below is from the Hollywood CRA's website.
Make of it what you will, keeping in mind that all conclusions are based on a very, very small number of self-selecting people, including those with some conflicts-of-interest, weighing-in on the subject. over-and-over.
In other words, draw your own conclusions but be smart and question the very premise of the project.




Young Circle Roadway Feasibility Study
The Hollywood CRA and Toole Design Group have initiated a Roadway Feasibility Study for Young Circle. This study will examine the feasibility of improving the public realm experience and functioning of Young Circle in Downtown Hollywood.

The goal of this project is to analyze the block structure and collaboratively develop and assess the feasibility of new street cross-sections and a new block structure.Presentation from May 15, 2017
Presentation from May 18, 2017 | Video from May 18, 2017
Presentation from June 20, 2017 | Audio from June 20, 2017

Sun Sentinel | Video from July 14, 2017




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