Tag Archives: Journal Star

Peoria Journal Star, Television

Bar Louie is gone

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I thought this was kind of funny. On page B1 of the Journal Star Thursday, December 30, there’s this little blurb:

What’s up with Bar Louie?

Blogger and entertainment editor Danielle Hatch is still trying to find out details on why there’s a closed sign on the door at the Bar Louie restaurant a the Shoppes at Grand Prairie. If you know more, join the conversation online.

So I go online and just type “Bar Louie Peoria” into Google. WEEK’s site pops up, where this story is posted with a date of Wednesday, December 29:

The General Manager at the Shoppes, Dawn Shipman says Bar Louie has closed “as a normal course of business.”

Bar Louie’s lease at the Shoppes has expired and closed immediately.

Mystery solved! Can someone from WEEK drop the Journal Star a line letting them know what’s going on over there at the Shoppes? They’re looking for details….

Museum Block, Peoria County, Peoria Journal Star

Panetta criticizes Block the Bonds effort

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Journal Star reporter Gary Panetta recycled his blog post of Sept. 2 (also see his follow-up post Sept. 3) as a print article on Sunday. He thinks the Block the Bonds group is “nitpicking and making much over nothing much at all and potentially mucking up a project that could turn out to be a real turning point for the city’s art scene.” I’ll let my comments on the two blog posts stand as my response to his article. I’ve reprinted them below the jump for archival purposes.

Continue reading Panetta criticizes Block the Bonds effort →

City Council, City of Peoria, Museum Block, Peoria Journal Star

Journal Star says it’s too late to turn back now… I believe they’ve fallen in love

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As I read Sunday’s Journal Star editorial, “Our View: Too late to turn back now on museum project,” I couldn’t help but think of that old Cornelius Bros and Sister Rose song — perhaps that was the intention of the headline writer:

The Journal Star has fallen in love with the museum project. And you know what they say about love: it’s blind. Those in love overlook all the flaws (even major ones) in the object of their desire. Such is the case with the Journal Star overlooking the major problems with the museum project, apologizing for them, justifying them, or just plain refusing to believe them in some cases. One can almost see them gazing at a framed picture of the museum rendering with a dreamy, far-away look in their eyes, wrapping their Caterpillar class ring with angora.

The starry-eyed Journal Star editors are wrong. In fact, it’s not too late to stop the madness. Not a spade of dirt has been turned yet. The museum plans only exist on paper. Yes, a lot of money has been expended, but that’s no justification for spending millions more on a flawed, doomed-to-fail plan that has gone from bad to worse since the referendum. As C. S. Lewis famously said, “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

The City Council should send the museum folks back to the drawing board Tuesday night by voting against the design concepts and the redevelopment agreement.

City Council, City of Peoria

Even the Journal Star gets it

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From today’s Journal Star editorial:

You don’t need hindsight to appreciate that the locals are starting to get fed up with the city’s economic development practices, which include doling out substantial subsidies at the same time cops are being fired. In fact budgets say volumes about a community’s priorities. In fact the city’s debt service on its TIF districts has increased at double the rate of inflation during this decade, with potentially more to come through a hotel development Downtown. In fact City Hall’s history is rather checkered in picking subsidized winners and losers. In fact the council had ample forewarning that the MidTown Plaza TIF – which included the now-closed Cub Foods and a $450,000 bill for next year – was a dud; their own consultant told them so.

That’s just a taste — you really should read the whole editorial. Companion article: Main Street merchants struggle while waiting for action on revitalization plans.

It’s all about priorities. The city council didn’t bat an eye at raising taxes downtown to give a $39.5 million grant to a local developer to build a downtown hotel. But there are big cuts to police, road improvements, code enforcement, and snow removal, just to name a few things. In other words, risky economic development schemes that benefit a few people are a higher priority than basic services that benefit all. That’s not right, and it needs to change.

It seems everyone gets that except the Peoria City Council.

City Council, City of Peoria

Hotel plans still shrouded in mystery

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It’s the worst-kept secret in Peoria. Despite not getting anyone to speak on the record, information about the proposed hotel on the Pere Marquette block has been leaking like a sieve to the Journal Star and bloggers. Unfortunately, since we don’t have any official word, we don’t know how much of that information is accurate.

There’s something else we don’t know: what public incentives will be requested for this project. According to Billy Dennis’s source, “Public financing accounted for roughly 40 percent of the cost of building [East Peoria’s] Embassy Suites,” and “Project investors are hoping to secure a similar percentage of public financing for this project through a tax increment financing project agreement.” An ancillary issue is the request to move Big Al’s, with their “grandfathered” status and adult use and liquor licenses, presumably to 414 Hamilton Blvd.

And, of course, there is a sense of urgency for this project. According to the Journal Star, this whole project “could go before the City Council for consideration on Nov. 25.” That’s in two weeks. And, according to Billy Dennis’s source, any delays “would kill the $100 million project.”

Oh yes, the project has been estimated to be $100 million. So, going back to the earlier rumor that approximately forty percent of that would be “public financing…through a tax increment financing project agreement,” we’re talking about $40 million in public incentives. I’m not sure how a TIF is going to provide that amount of financing (consider that the proposed museum is in a TIF, is a similarly-sized development, and would arguably be built by now if they could get $40 million out of their TIF). I also don’t know how the city could afford to give $40 million to a private developer when the budget is already in a deficit.

I’m not sure about a lot of things, because when you get down to brass tacks, the citizens don’t really know anything about this project. We’re being told by many bloggers that this is the greatest project for downtown since the civic center (how do they know that?) and that the city should move heaven and earth to make it happen or else. Or else? Or else no small number of detrimental things will happen: the civic center will fail, downtown hotels will lose occupancy, Caterpillar won’t use Peoria’s hotels anymore, tax revenues will go down, downtown will deteriorate, no one will want to develop in downtown Peoria ever again because it’s so hard to do business here, etc., ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

Peoria is evidently on the precipice of oblivion and this hotel deal is its only savior. And that deal itself is tenuously held together — either the developers get everything for which they ask when they ask for it, or the deal’s off. No negotiation, no public input. They make the decisions and take your tax money, and you better thank them for it.

The Journal Star got it right:

We appreciate that negotiations like these can be sensitive and there’s a lot of financial risk involved and not all of that can or should be played out in a public hearing. Nonetheless, there is one overriding principle at work here: If you want the public’s support and especially the public’s money, the public needs to know a little something about the business government is doing on its behalf.

Right now, the public is in the dark. And this huge project might come before the council by Thanksgiving? Sorry, but that can’t be.