Daily Archives: January 13, 2006

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How to kill a business without really trying

Every day on my way to work I drive by the corner of Gale and Forrest Hill, glancing at the corner to see if Velvet Freeze has reopened yet. I used to go there for lunch semi-regularly.

The past several days, there’s been a new sign out in front of Velvet Freeze: For Lease.

Yes, they’ve been successfully and efficiently driven out of business. All it took was a few brilliant moves:

  1. Tear up the street so people start avoiding the intersection, and keep it torn up for two years. If that doesn’t work, then:
  2. Completely obstruct the entrance so no one can get in or out for several months. And just to make sure no one comes back:
  3. Permanently obstruct the parking lot so that, even if they did try to reopen, no one would be able to park there.

It was number three that was the coup de grâce. It used to be that there was diagonal parking right off the westbound lane of Forrest Hill at the corner of Gale. You could just pull right up to the restaurant and park. Now, with the new and improved corner, they’ve put in a tall concrete curb, set back to make the turning radius onto Gale comfortable enough for people to speed by the restaurant without even seeing it — and making the “parking lot” for the restaurant as small and difficult to access as possible. Perfect.

From the looks of that little strip mall, Velvet Freeze isn’t the only business that couldn’t stay up and running. Except for the laundromat, everything else looks closed as well.

But, look at the bright side. Basic services people like me should be happy because they’re fixing roads in the older neighborhoods, and now we have a nice new… oh, wait, … they’re still not quite done yet….

City Council, Illinois American Water

Dream On

The cities of Urbana and Champaign are planning to join forces with Peoria and Pekin to explore acquiring Illinois American Water Company assets in their respective communities. … Urbana Chief Administrative Officer Bruce Walden disclosed the effort at Monday night’s meeting of the Urbana City Council, saying the city managers and attorneys in the four communities have been talking on a regular basis.That’s the news from the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette (hat tip to Bill).  All I can say is, “dream on.”  I’m sure whenever they approach RWE, parent company of Illinois American Water Company, they’ll get an almost identical answer as the city of Lexington, Kentucky, received:

The city has misinterpreted RWE AG’s intentions to sell American Water Works as a sign that Kentucky American Water is for sale, an executive with American Water wrote in a letter to Mayor Teresa Isaac.  RWE — the German utility conglomerate that owns American Water, the New Jersey-based parent company of Kentucky American — is not interested in selling Kentucky American, wrote Daniel L. Kelleher, senior vice president external affairs for American Water Works.  “The record is clear, that neither RWE nor American Water have expressed any interest in selling Kentucky American Water,” Kelleher wrote in his Dec. 29 letter.

The city continues to waste time and resources on this quixotic quest to own the water company.  And now, they’re going to waste more of our money.  Check this out (additional quote from News-Gazette):

Walden said the four cities have tentatively agreed to the following joint steps:

  • To budget $1 per capita ($37,000 in Urbana’s case) for hiring a consultant to advise the cities.
  • To enter into an intergovernmental agreement to organize the joint efforts.
  • To pursue state legislation to permit the sale of water company assets . . .
  • To contact other Illinois communities served by Illinois American Water to determine their interest in joint efforts.

Did you catch that first one?  They’re going to budget $1 per capita to hire a consultant to advise the cities.  That’s $1 for every person in the city of Peoria, or $112,936.  That’s almost enough money to hire two firefighters for a year.  Where is that money going to come from?  Out of their hat?

You gotta love our city council.  They’re so creative, persistent, collaborative, and willing to spend money on something that has been rejected by their constituents, defeated by the council for decades, and highly likely to fail.  Yet they’re seemingly unable or unwilling to apply that same creativity, persistence, collaboration, and willingness to spend money to things that their constituents have been screaming for:  fully staffing the fire and police departments, repairing roads and sidewalks (esp. in older neighborhoods), alleviating the storm water problems in Rolling Acres, and other basic city services.

Still waiting patiently for the new council to live up to their “basic services” campaign promises . . . .