The area already HAS "a lot of residents". It's the local nightlife and shopping district.
What it currently lacks is *services*. The only grocery store in walking distance is a pitiful mess hanging on by a thread. Businesses struggle to fill space because the commercial rents are too high, because the landlords are all holding out to see if they win the lottery of having their property get picked for the next mega-development to pave over it. And those developments aren't doing anything to fix the situation by, say, competing with their own retail space, because they can charge more to rich commuters by splurging on useless lobbies that stay empty 97% of the time.
The thing is, if you keep doing this, eventually you end up with an entire neighborhood full of people living in big buildings with lush ground-floor amenities, and they all have to drive 5 miles to the grocery store.
Smells like the exact same kind of nonsense as тАЬrich people are hoarding all the new apartments and keeping them emptyтАЭ (which is verifiably false).
In fact my hometownтАЩs downtown has a neighborhood completely full of block-sized apartment buildings, and one of the developers built a Publix at the bottom of one of the three block-sized developments he built.
And those apartment buildings are offering great rent specials to keep their prices competitive so I think someone just saw a nice, walkable neighborhood and sat there stewing until they could invent a problem with it.
Maybe that's happening in your neighborhood; in which case, good for you. But it's not happening here. Development isn't magic; government has to actually care and have a plan. My local government is basically an old-school political machine that's at best malignantly neglectful when they're not trying to exploit their only cash cow for the next mega-deal.
And I say all that as someone who deeply wishes they WOULD develop the area well, because it has SO much potential.
So, maybe be less hostile to those of us who aren't lucky enough to live in well-governed places?
The government may not have *forced* them to build a Publix, but it sure didn't get in their way. There are plenty of ways to skin a cat.
The problem up here in CT is that there are already tons of stakeholders with their hands in various cookie jars. They use government as a weapon to keep competition out of their jar. I'm not making this shit up; municipal corruption practically happens out in the open -- our PD, for instance, rakes in humanly impossible amounts of "overtime" from private contractors under a city mandate for all roadwork to have an officer "directing traffic", which usually just means "playing cellphone games while they sit in a city squad car".
Just because this doesn't sound familiar to you or is unrecognizable doesn't mean it isn't happening.
You need a lot of residents in an area to support retail space. Ground-floor admin/laundry/lobby/gym is a pretty good idea.
The area already HAS "a lot of residents". It's the local nightlife and shopping district.
What it currently lacks is *services*. The only grocery store in walking distance is a pitiful mess hanging on by a thread. Businesses struggle to fill space because the commercial rents are too high, because the landlords are all holding out to see if they win the lottery of having their property get picked for the next mega-development to pave over it. And those developments aren't doing anything to fix the situation by, say, competing with their own retail space, because they can charge more to rich commuters by splurging on useless lobbies that stay empty 97% of the time.
The thing is, if you keep doing this, eventually you end up with an entire neighborhood full of people living in big buildings with lush ground-floor amenities, and they all have to drive 5 miles to the grocery store.
"the landlords are all holding out to see if they win the lottery of having their property get picked for the next mega-development to pave over it"
This sounds like a job for the Land Value Tax!
Smells like the exact same kind of nonsense as тАЬrich people are hoarding all the new apartments and keeping them emptyтАЭ (which is verifiably false).
In fact my hometownтАЩs downtown has a neighborhood completely full of block-sized apartment buildings, and one of the developers built a Publix at the bottom of one of the three block-sized developments he built.
And those apartment buildings are offering great rent specials to keep their prices competitive so I think someone just saw a nice, walkable neighborhood and sat there stewing until they could invent a problem with it.
Maybe that's happening in your neighborhood; in which case, good for you. But it's not happening here. Development isn't magic; government has to actually care and have a plan. My local government is basically an old-school political machine that's at best malignantly neglectful when they're not trying to exploit their only cash cow for the next mega-deal.
And I say all that as someone who deeply wishes they WOULD develop the area well, because it has SO much potential.
So, maybe be less hostile to those of us who aren't lucky enough to live in well-governed places?
At no point did they government force them to build a Publix; they just did it because itтАЩs good for residents and good for the developer.
ItтАЩs Alabama, the government is completely hands-off.
The government may not have *forced* them to build a Publix, but it sure didn't get in their way. There are plenty of ways to skin a cat.
The problem up here in CT is that there are already tons of stakeholders with their hands in various cookie jars. They use government as a weapon to keep competition out of their jar. I'm not making this shit up; municipal corruption practically happens out in the open -- our PD, for instance, rakes in humanly impossible amounts of "overtime" from private contractors under a city mandate for all roadwork to have an officer "directing traffic", which usually just means "playing cellphone games while they sit in a city squad car".
Just because this doesn't sound familiar to you or is unrecognizable doesn't mean it isn't happening.
>>Smells like the exact Kim same kind of nonsense
This is not a coherent sentence.