Walking from lunch at home back to the office a few minutes ago, I noticed the headline of one of the free weeklies mentioning a downtown grocery store. A quality grocery store downtown is not a new topic.
Not far into the article, guess what? The store needs a city subsidy of $8-12 million. Why is it that everytime someone suggests building downtown, they want us taxpayers to chip in? Granted the $8-12 million is significantly less than what Mayor Sayles-Belton and Jackie Cherryholmes rammed through for the Target store and Block E. At $8-12 milliion, its not much more than what we taxpayers paid to move the Shubert Theatre. Now I've forgotten why we moved the Shubert, but it doesn't look much different in its new location, its just more noticeable. Back to the subsidy. $4 million is for 30 affordable housing units. That's $133,000 per unit, not an especially good deal. For $133,000 per we can go buy 30 downtown condo units, rent it out at affordable rates and have money left over to buy a few more units. (The Towers and the north end of downtown and 1200 on the Mall on the south end come to mind as places where you can buy for less than $133K). For $133,000 per unit we can build virtually anywhere in town. Yes, I'd like a downtown grocery store. I'd prefer it be a bit closer to home so that walking home with a weeks worth of groceries would be a reasonable consideration. I do, however, fail to see why whenever anyone wants to build on some of the most desirable real estate in the metro area their first stop is at City Hall to see how much of a subsidy they can get. Hasn't City Hall learned that the TIF gravy train has got to come to an end? Terrell Brown Loring Park [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Listen to your Yahoo! Mail messages from any phone. http://phone.yahoo.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
