Riverfront development in Phenix City, the key component of the whole downtown revitalization plan, has been in a state of suspension for a while now. Every time things have seemed to be in place for the city to move forward, some snag -- bureaucracy, politics, money -- seems to hang everything up again.

Now, thanks to the generosity of private donors, the money part of the problem might have been solved, at least for the time being. The city's on-again, off-again purchase of The Triangle -- the 700 and 800 blocks of Riverview Apartments -- is definitely on again. Phenix City Council on Tuesday scrapped an old agreement to buy the property for not quite $1 million, in favor of a new agreement to pay almost $3 million.

Why renegotiate a purchase agreement upward, and for three times the original price?

One reason is that thanks to the private pledges, the new figure comes at no cost to the city or its taxpayers. A more important reason is that while the original figure was enough to buy the property, it did not cover what will be a

necessary expense: relocating the residents of Riverview to other homes. The Housing Authority of Phenix City and the city government must draft something called an Acquisition and Disposition of Apartments Agreement, which must be approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

That approval is contingent on the local housing authority being able to find suitable housing for the people who will be displaced by The Triangle purchase and redevelopment, and that can be a complicated and expensive process. No longer is the philosophy of public housing a matter of just building a new cluster of buildings to replace an older one and herding residents into it; alternatives like private housing vouchers, mixed-use developments, rent-controlled private apartments and home ownership programs are all possibilities.

The benefits of getting Phenix City's downtown plans moving again are all but incalculable. Troy University's Phenix City campus plans to locate its new business school facility on The Triangle site; two other large-scale residential/retail projects, The Phenixian and Phenix Rising, are on hold until the riverfront property acquisition issues are resolved. What other projects and investments might spring up once the Riverview property is available for private development can only be imagined.

This isn't the first time private investors have anted up for the long-term benefit and progress of this community, and it almost certainly isn't the last. But this infusion of private capital into a project of immense public benefit is especially timely.

-- Dusty Nix