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University Daily Kansan, February 20, 1981
Commission to advise on 'cornfield mall' zoning
By DALE WETZEL Staff Reporter
The future of downtown Lawrence, a subject of debate among many Lawrence citizens for three years, will be the series of important decisions Monday.
"This issue is helplessly important for the city of Lawrence," Richard Kershenbaum, a member of the East
Lawrence Improvement Association, said yesterday. "It's easily the most important decision the city will make in decades."
On Monday, the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission, in a special 8 p.m. session in City Hall, will make its recommendation to the City council on a reasoning request by the development firm of Jacobs, Vivascio and Jacobs.
JV3' JV's request concerns a large plot of farmland, located south of Lawrence's city limits at the southeast corner of 37th Street and Armstrong Road.
THE CLEVELAND firm purchased an option on the 61-acre tract in October 1978. Since then, JVJ has been quality lobbying for the city to rezone the land, from its current residential designation to commercial development-457,000.
square feet worth of commercial development.
"Everyone should be interested in this," Barbara Waggoner, a member of citizens for a Better Downtown, said yesterday. "If this cornfield suburban downtown to a slow, but sure, death it's happened all over the country."
The city's consulting firm, Robert Teska and Associates, agrees with
Symbols different, but activism still alive
By PENN CRABTREE
Staff Reporter
For some, the once vigorous symbols of the 1960s and early 70's protest movement have ignominiously dwindled and died.
Chicago Seven members are trading on Wall Street or negotiating movie rights to autobiographies. The "We Generation" of the '80s has been replaced with the "90s" by a little of the old Woodstock? Just a little yellow bird in the Sunday funnies.
But according to KU student activists, past and present, only the symbols of political activism, not activism itself, have died.
"A lot of the old student activists are still active, but in a quieter way," Kathy Hoggard, a KU graduate student and ant-war demonstrator during the Iraq war, told me. "They said 'We've taken the organizational skills we learned as protesters, and use
them to make changes while working within the system."
HOGGARD, WHO works as an administrative assistant to the vice chancellor's office, said that many people working in community service fields were people who were politically active in the 1980s.
"I've heard it said that the political activists of the 60s 'sold out'," Hoggard said. "I don't think that term applies to most of us, to people who are still working to make the system more humane."
"We learned that change is more difficult to bring about than we'd thought, but our commitment hasn't affected the methods of change are different."
Another former activist, Steve Braun, who took part in the Memorial Stadium protest that forced the cancellation of the Chancellor's Spring ROTC Inversion in May 1968, said that activists were often less than active now.
"Many of the people who took part in
protests weren't part of any organized event, they were more apolitical than political," Braun, a preschool instructor, said. "They thought that if they were against the smoker, poted and grow their hair long, that they were making an important movement. The only political activism they practiced was in their lifetimes."
ANOTHER FORMER ACTIVIST, who asked not to be identified, said that the loud demonstrations and the raucous noise were the least of what the 1960s were about.
political consciousness," he said. "The second wave, working to actualize that consciousness, is a job for another generation."
That second wave, present KU student activists believe, is coming soon.
"The 86 protesters were beginners, they had no one to model from." Jorge Valderve, President of Latin American Solidarity, said. "We have learned from them, but we won't make the same mistakes that they made."
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VALDERE SAID that activists now were concentrating on building a network of protest with deep community roots.
"I suppose the violence, the shootings and the burning of the Kansas Union functioned as a symbol of our commitment to the future, a burning our bridges," he said. "But because people are doing something different now, not walking down a street carrying signs, doesn't mean political activism is dead."
"Activists are working with churches and community groups, and working closely with each other," he said. "We have specific issues we want to resolve. The network is just a baby now, but it will be a strong baby."
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Another student activist said that the present economic situation would spark another era of protest.
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"I worked on a b.i-weekly newspaper called the Vortex, a paper with an armed struggle, Weatherman philosophy. I realize now that there were things being done, as there are now, that had a higher social value."
"People are beginning to feel a money crunch and will be asked by their pocketbooks to either defend themselves or give in." Rhonda Neugebauer, one of the coordinators for last month's Rally Against Reagan, said. "The protests in the '60s were very generalized, but protests in the future will be regional, which will make the movement stronger."
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HE CTED THE Women's Transitional Care program, a Lawrence-based counseling and care program for battered women, as an example of practical and effective political activism.
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"I didn't like the plan," Arensberg said. "I voted against it. I called for ripening out four square blocks of the downtown. I don't want to see that downtown turn down. I like it just the way it is."
Waggoner. In a recently released study on Lawrence downtown redevelopment, the Evanston, ill., firm cited several cities as examples of the "devastation" wreaked by suburban shopping malls.
Arensberg said the downtown proposal that Action 80 eventually wring from JV-1 —covered downmarket mail "anchored" by J.C. Penney's, and Seam—was an unusual concession for a developer to make.
"Vacancies and blight (resulting from the loss of downtown business to a suburban mall) would have a severe impact on the overall function of the downtown in the community," the report states.
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"But publicity has been terrible. There will probably be just a handful of people there Monday night, and JVJ will think, 'Ah, nobody cares.'"
"The city planning staff has been terribly overworked trying to get ready for this meeting," she said. "I hope they prepare themselves sufficiently."
WAGGONER'S ORGANIZATION is one of a conglomeration of community groups that make up the People's Network. The network's components range from the KU Committee on South Africa to the League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Waggoner said she believed that Teska's conclusions, plus other similarities to gloomy consequences from the story, "had been 'terribly underpublicized.'"
"It's a group that's trying to act as a communication bridge between different town groups that are working for change in the downtown," Kersenbaum said. "We don't want the cornfield mall."
JACK ARENESBERG, a downtown Lawrence merchant and Action 80 member, conceded that "Action 80 got a black eve" in the public view.
"It itm in secret, and it probably shouldn't have," Aranesberg said. "But Action 6 did call a lot of publicity down on the fact that JV3 was trying to build a suburban mail that could wreck our downtown."
"However, at the time, it was the best deal we could get from JVJ. I think the climate is much better now for a more subdued type of development, away from those big, covered, energy-guzzling malls."
"Action 80 was a self-appointed executive clique, one that couldn't possibly get adequate public input." Kerenbaum said. "JV probably thought that Action 80 represented community sentiment, which it did not. Action 80 met in secret, with no public hearings to bother them."
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field malls" possible impact on the downtown. After its formation, Action 90 comprised extensive neighborhood malls and shopping centers in suburban alternatives to the suburban mall.
Kershenbaum said he thought the city was on the "right track" now, and "working in good faith" with the community group's interested in downtown. However, he said, it hasn't always been that way.
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These new public attitudes, Arensberg said, were making big retail firms reconsider where they put their stores—even to the extent of contemplating putting them in a free-standing downtown arrangement. Arensberg said he favors this approach.
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"I think Teska is an excellent, excellent organization," Kershenbaum said. "The problem is the city is doing right now with Teska what it should be." The state's budgetary JVJ thing came up, the city put way too much faith in Action 80."
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Action 80, a coalition of city, business and industry leaders, was formed in May 1979 out of concern for the "corn-
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"It is a shame that, in the past, cities have let Sears and Penney's dictate to them where their stores should go," Arensberg said. "You can see the results of all that over the country, and people are getting sick of it.
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