The following info just hit my mailbox while I was home for lunch:
Mr. Curt Craig from Cub Foods in Minneapolis [said] they are closing the Midtown Plaza Cub Food Store. […] This will happen the first part of March, with the last employees leaving mid-March.
You remember Midtown Plaza. The City paid $5.5 million to clear the land (including knocking down old ladies’ houses on Dechman) required to make way for this project and made the area a TIF district after rejecting their own consultant’s report that said this was a bad deal for the City. They listened to the developer’s consultants instead.
The city’s consultant (Development Strategies, Inc.) predicted, according to a Journal Star editorial on 3/9/1999, that Cub Foods “would draw 90 percent of its customers from other city grocery stores.” Joseph’s consultants (Melaniphy & Associates, Inc.; Deloitte & Touche) predicted “43 percent of revenues would come from customers living outside the city” and that Cub Foods “would draw customers from a 10-mile radius.”
The city’s consultant was right. After Cub Foods opened, Thompson’s/Sullivan’s and John Bee both closed. With the loss of Cub Foods, where are East Bluff residents supposed to go for groceries now?
Also, will the city get a refund on that TIF money from the developer?
bentone writes:
“Gary Sandberg gets way too much mileage out of just voting “nay” on everything that could possibly be forward-thinking.”
Which Sandberg “nay” vote, in reality, turned out to be a forward-thinking project?
I cannot think of one example. bentone, what are your examples?
It is great to be forward-thinking, the point is that must have a wide definition. All the promoted forward-thinking projects have been unsuccessfull even with large public cash infusions.
Trying a project with dubious, ‘juiced’ or ‘pie in the sky’ /’high hopes’ numbers is great on the private dime, not the public dime. As mazr accurately and specifically listed projects and then one could add “fill in name project” have not delivered the projected results let alone 10% below proforma projections.
In my opinion, Gary votes with integrity based on realistic research and thoughtful evaluation of massive amounts of data. He is not swayed by emotional or feel good presentations which do not match the reality of effective urban renewal.
For example, there is an article in the Economist (Jan) about the over-building of museums on a world-wide basis. Museums have been touted as engines of urban renewal. This article points out that said museums ‘often enjoy high visitor numbers in the first year or two, but then attendance tends to taper off’. Here is the kicker line….
“Such investments are clearly unsafe bets for urban renewal.” BOLD type needed.
In Denver, for example, where Daniel Libeskind designed a new $110M building for the art museum, an initial boom of visitors in 2006 has waned, and budget contraints have forced the museum to cut staff.”
This is the so called information age. Projections and information can be verified via the Internet and networking with others in the four corners of the world. There will be a ‘juggernaut’ (I have heard of a $300,000 plus figure although not verified at this point in time) for public relations campaign (media blitz) to get the public facility referendum to be approved by the voters in Peoria County.
An increase of sales tax could be used in more effective ways to stabilize and revitalize our community.
P.S. I just received my bill for my replaced furnace ignitor which had 8% tax for that part. If the referendum were to be passed, that tax would be 8 1/4% tax.