Economics being what it is, this is evidence that your hypothetical segregationist throwback is expecting to get more than a billion dollars of value out of the deal. That doesn't quite establish that someone's trying to screw the city, but it does gesture pretty emphatically in that direction; actual political sentiments hardly enter into it, except insofar as they provide exploitable tensions.

(If I were the mayor, I'd take the money and then build the fountain as part of a practical exhibit in a civil rights museum.)