Gregory Luce wrote:
I'm deeply troubled by handing over these public assets, to be managed by a a private entity
These only became publicly owned because the City of Minneapolis expended tax-collected dollars to purchase and maintain these properties. For all the talk of keeping home ownership affordable, the City Council's actions speak otherwise. Everytime the social engineers on the City Council purchase a theater or building to further some social engineering goal, they have to pay for it by collecting taxes, either now or in the future, from the property owners. The continuing rise of property taxes only serves to make home ownership within Minneapolis more expensive.
If these theaters are so valuable that they can't be allowed to fail then let those who believe so put forth their own money. That is, let the theater backers risk their own money. After all, is that not what so many people are asking of Red McCombs and Carl Pohlad? Why should it be any different for a theater on Hennepin Ave?
Rather than wait thirty years to transfer ownership of these theaters, the City Council ought to put them up for auction, individually or as a group. And, at the same time, the City Council ought to get out of the redevelopment business. Rather than stepping in when the private market supposedly fails, it ought to ask what barriers it put in place to cause the market to fail.
Scott McGerik South St Paul (formerly Hawthorne) http://scott.mcgerik.com/
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