"each business handle it themselves..." you mean sort of like planning
anarchy? design by hodge podge? business as usual.....?
gee... he said sarcastically, i thought this was VISION 2020.
i still have an extremely difficult time understanding such emotional
distress over a PLANNED park with CONNECTIONS to LINEAR PATHS
and PEDESTRIAN SIDEWALKS set off the curbs by planting medians ala
ft russell, with landscaped GREEN BELTS and PARKS, housing HIGH
salary (read economic contribution to the tax base), LOW IMPACT
businesses...
all of which we (this group) say we prefer over continued, busines as
usual, sometimes tacky, unplanned "construction-because-we-can."
i read greg's concerns as merely red herrings for his basic opposition to
ANY new construction in moscow. in the case of the proposed site
near tidymans, the land is CURRENTLY zoned motor business. the
business park would have been such a tremendous improvement over
what could leaglly, without much public input, could happen on that site.
yet greg indicated he would fight the business park because the hotdog
stands and car dealerships would happen ANYWAY. i just don't get it....
he was saying he'd rather have trashy strip development ONLY, rather
than have a well-planned, aesthetic example of what CAN be done to set
an example that others could then live up to or be left behind by.
>>> <charris@uidaho.edu> 01/22/96 01:44pm >>>
Greg Brown is expressing some of the same concerns I came away
from the last BP meeting with. As a researcher on community
development, this is NOT an issue of pro or anti-business to me, but one
of public subsidy of yet another sector of the economy.
The question I will be asking at the next BP meeting is a simple one: If the
demand for a business park is great enough to build one, why isn't the
private sector willing to step up and invest in it? For example, like the
Palouse Mall owners and many other small business owners, the
Bennetts are willing to finance buildings and other capital development
across the highway from the BP site, bear those costs, and profit from
their capital development investments and lease revenues -- so why not
a business park? On the other hand, why can't these high-tech, small
businesses provide for their own infrastructure and superstructure
needs themselves?
It would appear to come down to a matter of assuming financial risk.
Should the taxpayers assume the risk that the private sector is now
unwilling to take? This raises other questions that Greg Burton might
research: How successful have other business parks in the region
been -- in other words, how big a risk is it? Aren't there business parks
elsewhere funded by the private sector -- if not, why not? Why can't
the development go into the industrial slum that qualifies Moscow for the
proposed finance scheme?
As a fiscal conservative, I would want to know the real risks and likely
benefits of the park, and I would then want to be able to vote on it, given
that the costs and benefits of this industry subsidy would directly affect
me -- just as major infrastructure development bonds are debated and
voted on. To handle it otherwise -- say, the decisionmaking of some
unelected "nonprofit" (Won't a segment of local businesspeople profit??)
council -- smacks of the very Soviet-style central planning and socialism
(i.e., nonrepresentative, governmental intrusion into private enterprise)
that political and economic conservatives decry.
I will be asking the panel on Thursday to address these concerns.