Drunk on Power: The developer of downtown's entertainment district fights the neighborhoods' right to party

Traffic along Grand Boulevard makes a kwunk-kwunk sound when it reaches the Power and Light District. The noise comes from driving over not metal plates but buried pylons. Workers have built retractable bollards into Grand at 13th Street and Truman Road. The bollards will close Grand to traffic whenever Cordish wants to throw a hot, booze-in-the-streets party.

The bollards are spaced about 3 feet apart. I imagine that, once deployed, they might resemble middle fingers to folks in Westport or Martin City.

A version of this column appeared on The Pitch's Web site last Friday. Later that day, Cordish Marketing Director Jon Stephens suggested that his company's opposition to the festival bill was not entirely selfish. Stephens sent me an e-mail saying the bill "opens up a great deal more questions than it answers," though he did not elaborate.

He continued: "I think an honest discussion is best, not inflammatory one-sided stories."

I'll cop to flame fanning but not unfairness. I sought comment from Stephens and Hatfield prior to the story's appearance on the Web.

Stephens also tried to suggest that Cordish had no say over those bollards. "That is a Sprint Center and Parks and Recreation issue," he wrote.

So let the record be clear: It's just a coincidence that the city installed street-closing mechanisms on the one side of the arena that borders the Power and Light District.