Retail report delay blamed on Conservancy case

Buried within today's memo from city manager Kent Kirkpatrick on the ongoing legal battle with John Martin's Lansdowne Park Conservancy is this:

This seems curious, since the city has all along tended to (and in its factum, continues to) dismiss the Conservancy as an inconvenient but largely benign nuisance. I think it's fair to say City Hall has treated the Friends of Lansdowne challenge as a more significant threat to the redevelopment plan. And yet even before the Friends announced they're giving up the ghost, the city's contractors went to work.

Included in the reports neither council nor the public will see until the fall is a much-anticipated retail update. Has OSEG been able to attract the "unique" businesses council demanded, and was promised? Or have the Lansdowne partnership's legal troubles, combined with competing mall expansions and a tight retail environment, conspired to stymie OSEG's best intentions? We'll have to wait to find out, thanks to one man who we've been told all along doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.