Inside Report for October 9, 2009

• By LANNY KELLER
• Advocate Opinion page staff
• Published: Oct 9, 2009 - Page: 9B

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

A visionary proposal for an iconic structure to exemplify both a community as a special place, and state-of-the-art technology. An outcry against public spending for such a frivolous expenditure. Much angst and pain before the building is built.

The visionary: Gustave Eiffel.

The reactionary public: Parisians.

The judgment of hindsight: What were those people thinking?

Eiffel planned to build his steel tower for a world’s fair in Barcelona, but the city fathers rejected it. After much angst in Paris, it was built as a gateway to a world’s fair there, where it was roundly condemned by leading artists of the day.

At one point, Parisians thought about tearing it down, if you can believe that.

Of course, it is now one of the world’s most famous structures.

East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Kip Holden is no Gustave Eiffel. The latter was an engineer and scientific entrepreneur, involved in aerodynamic experiments far removed from his namesake structure.

Holden is a lawyer and politician, but he probably feels for Eiffel these days.

That’s because of the difficulty of selling the Alive project that would be built in large part through a city bond issue planned for the Nov. 14 ballot.

Alive is part museum, part aquarium, part thrill-ride attraction and part public park — but the parts have failed to ignite the public imagination.

That might change, but the lessons of obstructionism and blinkered vision are numerous and validated by history in places nearer to Baton Rouge than the capital of our French cousins.

Often, public works are rejected by voters for a time, but when they’re built later there is widespread recognition that the naysayers were badly wrong.