A vignette of the facilitator's wall graphic shows competing goals, as expressed at the January 30 public meeting to discuss the future of the racetrack on the Albany waterfront.

There were calls for total acquisition for parkland, for a commercial urban waterfront, for habitat preservation, for active water-borne recreation, for a ferry terminal, and for various combinations of the above. Some speakers suggested a low-density Asilomar-like conference center, some invoked images of European urban waterfronts, and some considered the details of the boundaries between built space and open space to be more important than the relative amounts of each.

But one area of consensus emerged: The track should go. Nearly every speaker who addressed the issue, regardless of the level of commercial activity they favored, seemed to agree that Albany's waterfront would be a better place without horse racing.