Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Don't Believe the Hype: May Town Study Doesn't Say What They Say it Says

Posted by Caleb Hannan on Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 11:15 AM

click to enlarge oie_maytown.jpg
Holy misleading headlines, Batman! From the Tennessean: "UT Study Backs May Town Project." From the City Paper: "Impact study: May Town Center won't hurt downtown." From a paper we just made up, called the Daily Bugle: "May Town Center: Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread!" If all you had to go off of were these headlines (and the copy written underneath them), you'd have to assume that the 57-page study released by University of Tennessee economics professor Dr. Bill Fox is 100% pro May Town. It's not. In fact, Dr. Fox's study is anything but certain about the positive impacts of May Town. It says that May Town will compete with downtown for business and that half the jobs it creates would have located to Davidson County without the project. As the study says: "MTC employment will represent the results of a zero sum competition with existing Nashville office space." Does that sound conclusive? Dr. Fox has got to be wondering what he's got to do to get a little nuance up in this piece. He's the go-to guy when it comes to producing objective analysis on big, unwieldy projects and then having them hilariously misconstrued for partisan purposes. It happened when he published the Music City Center study for former Mayor Bill Purcell. Now it's happening all over again with May Town. He's like Wilson from Home Improvement; the unseen oracle whose sage advice is mangled for comic effect. Only without the fence.

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You, sir, did not just make up The Daily Bugle! That's the paper Peter Parker works for. This error calls into question the whole veracity of the rest of your post!
Ha. Just kidding. Good post.

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Posted by Aunt B. on June 2, 2009 at 12:00 PM

Proving, once again, that I'm incapable of having an original thought...

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Posted by Caleb on June 2, 2009 at 2:10 PM

I don't know. I thought the idea of giving chocolate to your dissenters was pretty brilliant. I look forward to ways of dissenting with you just to get chocolate.

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Posted by Aunt B. on June 2, 2009 at 3:45 PM

Oh wait, that was nm who came up with that, wasn't it?
Shucks.
Anyway, don't feel bad. Even the Bible rips off the Epic of Gilgamesh and if God can't be original, who can?

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Posted by Aunt B. on June 2, 2009 at 3:46 PM

I'm sitting in the presentation of this economic impact study to the Metro Planning Commission right now (yay for public library wifi from next door!).
Something that should be pointed out is that the economic impact study doesn't include any of the costs or cost impacts for the actual construction of bridges, roadway alterations, water/sewer, etc. To me, this is a huge omission when we talk about whether this project is cost-positive, -neutral, or -negative for Davidson County and the region.

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Posted by Rick Bradley on June 3, 2009 at 9:21 AM
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