Wizard Marks wrote: As this group (immigrants on Lake St) assimilates, there is no guarantee that they will continue to cluster on Lake St...."
David Piehl writes: Wizard has a point on this, there really is no guarantee that any business on Lake or anywhere else will continue indefinately. At one time, people thought Sears & Honeywell would be there forever; they are gone. However, by the same token, there is also no guarantee that Allina and Wells Fargo will be viable in the longer term either. I think the fact that the budding businesses on Lake are so fragile is an argument to do something to assist them, not price them out of the market. Wizard writes: Incubator and micro-businesses cannot, over the long haul, strengthen Lake St. to produce the kind of taxes we need to generate. If we're going to do this project, we want the positive effects to last at least 20 years. (snip) If taxes are raised suddenly to where we would want them to be, every business goes down. They're too small to bear that burden..... David Piehl writes: It took me a minute to digest this, but it is a scary thought, and one of the main reasons I oppose the Access/Excess Project. >From this statement, I get the idea that in order to pay for the Access Project, or possibly someone's "preferred" outcome of it - taxes all along Lake Street will rise. This in turn will cause struggling businesses to fail, and at that point businesses that can afford to pay the high taxes - businesses that want access, will move in to "revitalize" or more appropriately to gentrify Lake Street. I think this makes it clear that the Access Project isn't about helping the people & businesses who are already in south Minneapolis - if it's not for us,then who is it for?!? Very frightening! David Piehl Central __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
