Members of community must ask themselves: Is growth really all that bad?

My last several columns were somewhat cynical. In fact, some could argue that they were depressing. As a direct result, I am going to try to be a little more upbeat this time. Here are some things on my radar screen that have me excited about living in mid-Missouri. Maybe they’ll help answer the question, “Where are all these people coming from?”

The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) proposal will provide for three significant projects on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus — the $150 million Health Sciences Research Center, a new incubator for approximately $4 million and a Plant Sciences Research Center expected to cost somewhere around $5 million.

The Health Sciences Research Center alone may change the entire face of our community by expanding our research prospects and providing potentially life-saving cures that may someday result in lesser cancers, repair of spinal columns and prevention of childhood diseases. So who from Columbia could be opposed to that? (Oops, was that a little cynical?)

University Hospitals has proposed a significant reconstruction and expansion plan to keep health care in the state and our community at the forefront.

The three-phase program, which could top $600 million in improvements, starts with a brand-new surgical tower, a 3,000-car parking facility and an outpatient orthopedic facility. The new surgical tower will be “cutting edge” (excuse the pun) and provide advanced lifesaving skills and state-of-the-art equipment in our community of 91,000 people.

The hospital, which provides services throughout the state of Missouri, celebrates its 50th anniversary of utilizing buildings and spaces designed years before the invention of CT scans, MRIs, angioplasty, and whatever other procedure you wish to name. The hospital is the leading trauma care provider for the entire region and provides more than $43 million in indigent care as the hospital safety net for our state.

The project could have started months ago, but our priority was the concern regarding a few children in married student housing and whether they would be inconvenienced by having to attend another school. (Oops, a little bit cynical again.)

Boone Hospital Center, along with the new office facility being built on its campus, is proposing its own surgical tower to provide state-of-the-art health care. How fortunate we are in a town like ours to have such competing health interests worried about improving our health care!

This building, estimated price unknown at this time (but clearly with lots of zeros), would require the demolition of the old Boone Hospital, which nobody can see because it is buried amongst all the other buildings around it. Built before the dawn of civilization, I’m sure someone in our town will argue we shan’t tear down thou’st historic structure merely for the advancement of health care — probably because President Harry Truman had a boil lanced there in 1944. (Oops, another cynical comment.)

Add to the list an addition to the courthouse, an addition and re-making of city hall, a proposed nanotechnology center, new dormitories, improvements to Brady Commons, new engineering research facilities, and Discovery Ridge, just to name a few, and we wonder why people keep coming?

Ask anyone about this town, and they will tell you it’s a great place to live. With rankings in national publications repeatedly demonstrating the truth of the statement, why wouldn’t you want to move here? Let’s see, I can go to a town in Missouri ranked by all these magazines as a great place with incredible health care and education that even provides free health care for the indigent or I can go to say — Cleveland?

I pose the question to you: Are the improvements discussed above not the kind of growth that we desire? State-of-the-art health care, and the nurses and physicians that serve it. State-of-the-art education, and the professors and students who serve it. State-of-the-art research, and the scientists and graduate students who serve it. Hard-working people building houses, apartments, roads and streets for the people who serve it. Power plants, water plants, sewage plants, parks, recreation facilities, and the people who serve them.

This town is ready to take it up a notch, importing great people who will add to the great fabric of our community. Other communities would die for the things we are experiencing — even our Wal-Marts. Our fixation with listening to cynics and pessimists who wish to live in the past is moronic. Some regulation does improve our community. Hidden agenda regulations do not.

If you wish to thwart the momentum that we currently have, please consider relocating to a sleepy little town. I find Fayette very attractive (Oops, they just got a new McDonald’s — that might be too much growth!). If you don’t like it here anymore, the Constitution guarantees you the right and freedom to move about the county. If you don’t want growth, move to a community that is experiencing no growth, limited growth, anti-growth, or any other hyphenated form of the discussion. But quit killing this town’s momentum. Other people have dreams, too. And the people who want this community to grow with great facilities like we are talking about, with great people we are talking about, are happening here and now. And most people want it.

Improvers are welcome. Impeders should be denied.