December 14, 2009

New decision date: next Monday

Aiming to break the logjam, Dick Kallenbach suggested picking D'Amato Realty as the lead developer for the mall property but giving it just 18 months to get things moving instead of two years.
That proposal drew just one supporter: Gardner Wright.
Then Don Monti from Renaissance asked to speak. He said he didn't understand why John Leone thought he had a conflict of interest, but agreed that it was up to Leone and the Bristol Downtown Development Corp. to decide.
Leone offered to resign his seat so a successor could be picked. That, not surprisingly, alarmed everyone. They told Leone to stay.
Monti said he would be willing to talk with D'Amato and see if perhaps the two companies could reach some sort of compromise that would leave everyone happy.
Ed D'Amato then spoke, urging Leone to vote since he didn't see a conflict either.
But Leone held firm and, finally, D'Amato agreed to talk with Monti.
The BDDC plans to meet again next Monday to see if it can come to a better resolution than tonight's meeting.
It couldn't get worse, right?
Anyway, read all about it in tomorrow's Bristol Press. Reporter Jackie Majerus will have more than basics on here.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Typical Bristol! I can see already how this is gonna go. Local guy gets it because of typical Bristol cronyism. Gardner Wright. What a joke. God, I'm glad I moved out of Bristol. Too bad my business is still there.

Anonymous said...

Gees, no surprise there. Wright is a huge buddy of Damato and Kallenbach has jumped on the bandwagon. It is clear that renaissance is the better developer with more experience, financial backing at the ready but still these two clowns want Damato! Unfortunately the same tired people with the same narrow minds keep on getting appointed to important boards that make life-long decisions for us that are poor decisions. This trend needs to be broken. New blood needs to be put on these boards and these other "cronies" need to be taken off the boards because they are dragging Bristol down and it is clear that no matter what solid information you give them that Renaissance is the way to go, Kallenbach, Wright and now Janelle will still pick Damato out of some misguided loyalty for Damato.