ken avidor wrote:
WM: This was the trade off Phillips, Central, and Powderhorn made in exchange for saving the Sears Building. The original suggestion was to flatten the Sears site and start over with big box shopping like the same developer from Chicago (Daley, I think his name was) was proposing and had done at the Montgomery Ward site in St. Paul. The concept was called "anchor tenant." According to the second developer applicant, Ray Harris of Calhoun Square and other developments fame, we would have to have several anchor tenants to cover the increased cost of saving and maintaining the buildings. Micro businesses were not going to have enough stability to cover the costs. My conclusion was that economic sustainability must be a function of economies of size.I heard that Nash Finch, a corporate food chain wants to put a chain-style, hispanic oriented supermarket called Avanza in the former Sears building.If this were true, it would likely seriously affect the homegrown hispanic stores that have worked so hard to revitalize Lake Street. Why would a city agency consider doing such a thing? Is there a Hispanic business organization fighting this? ...and where is the Mayor and the City Council on this? We can't exactly be celebrating our spicy hot multicultural community and and at the same time help a corporation turn Lake Street into Suburban Vanilla . Perhaps Steve Brandt can look into this.
Originally, we were looking at a grocery store in Texas which catered to a Latino community and was very successful. Maybe so much so that they were bought out by Nash Finch, who knows? It's six years later, Harris is no longer the developer, a piece of the land is being sold off to Alina/Abbott for another parking ramp, and we're back to square one, I think, but maybe not. We've learned a lot in the process.
WizardMarks, Central
Ken Avidor Kingfield _______________________________________ 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
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