Doug Talllamy's lecture based on his book, Bringing Nature Home, to be in the Global Campus at 2 East Center Street at 7 p.m. August 20, 2010: Glad to know where the "Global Campus" is before the day to go there

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Saturday, while visiting the Farmer's Market on the Fayetteville Square, I found a parking spot next to a former bank building that now houses Fayetteville Underground, a new restaurant and a new retail shop featuring products for the well-financed outdoor enthusiast. Across the street, I spotted a sign on what for decades was known as the Continuing Education Center.
Now I know that I don't have wander up and down Center Street looking for the Global Campus. Nice sign, but I haven't learned how the function of that UA satellite site has actually become "global."
When I left the parking spot on Center Street and turned right, I was moving slowly between the Arvest Bank (which I still remember under a couple of previous names) and a hotel that covers the north end of the block with the Global Campus on its south end.
No signs apparent there, but then I spotted a small fabric sign near the hotel's main entrance with its newest name.
The apparently temporary sign says "THE Cosmopolitan" but doesn't say "hotel." One might guess the building houses a news stand that sells upscale magazines as easily as that it is a working hotel. Walk-in business must be impaired by the lack of a noticeable sign.
Aha, that is the one all the news and business-news articles have been about. One article called it a "historic hotel," The look of the building doesn't suggest it should be called historic.
A better candidate for that title was the now-destroyed hotel a block to the southeast that news articles in its final year were calling "blighted."
There is a simple explanation for the sad hotel situation near the Fayetteville square.
Bankers got caught up in lending money to people who are always seeing the pie in sky above existing structures but have not worked and earned enough money to afford to pay for having the pie baked.
Renovating the truly "historic" hotel would have made sense and would have cost less than the fantasy of replacing it.
And just keeping what is now called "The Cosmopolitan" clean and functioning would have made a lot of sense.
The Fayetteville City Council needs to pass an ordinance allowing or REQUIRING itself to determine the true economic standing of people who propose major projects and even to publicly discuss the past performance of these people before deciding whether to approve new plans.