Who are "We?"

 Honestly, when you read or listen to  Mr. Kessi's words, it sounds like he's one of us.  Given the repetitious tone of his opinion piece in the Lake Oswego Review, it's my guess that it was written by one of Mr. Kessi's strategists.   See what you think.

In its editorial last week (“City should hold true to vision for downtown core, reject Wizer plan,” July 17), The Review used a quote from Confucius. The quote — “Study the past if you would define the future” — is sound advice. We should all draw lessons from our past. However, we cannot live backwards. We live in the present and, hopefully, in the future. We are not static. So as this community, the Development Review Commission and the City discuss the redesign of the Wizer Block, I am inclined to put Confucius together with Winston Churchill who said, “... if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.”

When we redesigned our original concept, we studied the past and learned from it — Lake View Village, Oswego townhomes and the code vision are all incorporated. We studied the community in its present — we didn’t open a quarrel between past and present. We listened to citizens, the DRC and the City, and came up with a significantly improved development that fits the code’s vision. We looked to the future of Lake Oswego and to a place where people want to live, work, shop and play in a core and can leave their cars at home.

We get it - by saying we, you are suggesting you are one of us.  

Mr. Kessi makes it sound like he lives here - like he has a love of the town for more than the money it will make for him and his investors - like at the end of the day, when the project is done, he will go home to his wife and kids somewhere in Lake Oswego and deal (happily) with the downtown he has envisioned.  But he'd better live close to downtown and have one or no cars for his family, because that's what he is asking the rest of the people who live in downtown to do.

It isn't enough that people "leave their cars at home" because there won't be enough parking spaces at home to put their cars if there are more than one per household.  (US Census data show that only 800 households in town do not have cars, while a majority have 2, 3 or more, but Kessi believes up-scale residents won't own any or very many cars.   It doesn't matter what happens to congestion or parking since Kessi will go home to Scapoose where density is very low and parking is not a problem.




So Mr. Kessi - does destroying the past mean progress?  Is it you or citizens who want to reserve their heritage who have a "quarrel with the past?"  What should become of our tangible history that we want to share with our children?  Will future generations value what we build, or will they mourn the things that we destroy?  Progress isn't just flowing the crowd, or creating things that are new, it's knowing what is of value and then moving in that direction.

“A faint smell of lilac filled the air. There was always lilac in this part of town. Where there were grandmothers, there was always lilac.”
― Laura Miller, Butterfly Weeds