I don't know if I would categorize it as Katz bailing on the project--it's a very common strategy in development to plan, build, stabilize tenancy, and sell/exit, even on multi-phase projects (MacLab is looking to do the same with The Parks). I think we're all disappointed in the public amenity package delivered, but consider that we already got the hardest part done: getting the buildings built. Despite the disinteresting landscape of banks and shelled spaces, there is still immense long term potential for when demand and financial underwriting makes sense to do build out those amenities.
In the mean time, it's pretty clear why we didn't get most of these amenities for anyone who spends time around downtown. Most evenings when I walked around downtown, it's still not uncommon to see more homeless folks and those bent-on-fent than average people. You cannot expect businesses to open up downtown purely out of their own charitable spirit or to satisfy people's unrealistic dreams of what should be there when the reality is day time foot traffic is mediocre, evening foot traffic sucks, and weekend foot traffic is even worse outside of events.
I mean hell, consider that City Centre was still a halfway decent mall when ICE District started construction and now it's a hollowed out zombie limping its way through receivership. That's just one indicator of how much things have changed in the past decade after (insert list of bad things hampering this development since inception that we've all read on this site 500 times).
