...As Taft Wireback reports on today’s front page, there are still remnants of its past prosperity to build on: the Greensboro Coliseum, the Sheraton Four Seasons and its next-door neighbor, Four Seasons Town Centre.
...the area’s viability is in the whole city’s best interests.
As in, it's in Greensboro taxpayer's best interests
to borrow from the community's children to fix up High Point Road
for the benefit of local real estate owners
at the expense of others who would lose business nearby?
...Their plan, created with citizen input and the aid of outside consultants...
What citizens?
...envisions a series of themed villages:
-- University/mixed use, meaning nearby colleges and universities.
Subsidized with taxpayer dollars?
-- Sports, recreation and fitness, revolving primarily around the coliseum.
Paid for with taxpayer dollars?
-- Hospitality, involving the most prominent asset in the area, the Koury Convention Center/Four Seasons Town Centre complex, as well as other hotels near High Point Road and Interstate 40.
Businesses to be subsidized with taxpayer dollars?
Conceived two years ago, the plan also calls for streetscaping, wider sidewalks and bike lanes.
To be paid for with money borrowed from our children?
And it preserves citizen input by creating a standing committee of community and business representatives.
Like the RUCO taskforce?
.
Koury, TREBIC and RUCO: What could Regulatory Capture look like?
Friday, July 16, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
...A $19 million Aquatic Center is under construction on the coliseum grounds, as is a new ACC Hall of Champions in part of the Special Events Center.
How much will swimmers have to pay to park and enter the Aquatic Center
at next year's City Championships?
...There have been setbacks. The economy stalled. A planned shopping center adjacent to the Koury Convention Center stands mostly vacant beyond a movie theater. The construction of an amphitheater on the coliseum grounds was stopped cold by the City Council, even after grading had begun.
.
The Greensboro Coliseum Complex has the following advertising trade agreements
in place for the 2010-11 Fiscal Year:
$90,000 with News & Record in exchange for Club Seats,
[and] Triad Best of Broadway season tickets...
City of Greensboro response to a Triad Watch information request
$90,000 with News & Record in exchange for Club Seats,
[and] Triad Best of Broadway season tickets...
City of Greensboro response to a Triad Watch information request
If High Point Road becomes revitalized,
wouldn't low paying shop owners be driven off by higher rents?
A more vigorous economy would be nice. So would less antipathy from the City Council toward the coliseum, which is an obvious key to the area’s resurgence.
The Greensboro Coliseum Complex has the following advertising trade agreements
in place for the 2010-11 Fiscal Year:
.
$90,000 with News & Record in exchange for Club Seats,
[and] Triad Best of Broadway season tickets...
City of Greensboro response to a Triad Watch information request
[and] Triad Best of Broadway season tickets...
City of Greensboro response to a Triad Watch information request
.
But the city’s investments in streetscaping, public safety and the coliseum should prime the pump for more private investment when the tide does finally turn...
With the right blend of city, community and business leadership, High Point Road’s fortunes might turn sooner rather than later."
With the right blend of city, community and business leadership, High Point Road’s fortunes might turn sooner rather than later."
Isn't it really with the right amount of taxpayer dollars,
amounting to what some could consider kickbacks for "business leadership"
in exchange for campaign contributions
and Coliseum freebees for the News and Record?
.
The Greensboro News & Record Editorial BoardSunday, July 18, 2010
.
.
"City merchants seek to rid once-lucrative corridor of blight, crime
Why did the Greensboro News and Record change the headline of the article to:
"High Point Road: Stores move away, crime sets in" ?
...city officials hope to restore the lost luster along what planners dub the Central Gateway Corridor that includes High Point Road and West Lee Street.
In time, urban blight could disappear under wide sidewalks shaded by arching trees and lined with attractive new businesses or parking garages under multistory apartments –– even in what’s now the Greensboro Coliseum’s parking lot...
...Those hopes could get a boost next year when the coliseum unveils both the ACC Hall of Champions and the city’s $19 million aquatic center...
The Greensboro Coliseum Complex has the following advertising trade agreements
in place for the 2010-11 Fiscal Year:
.
$90,000 with News & Record in exchange for Club Seats,
[and} Triad Best of Broadway season tickets...
City of Greensboro response to a George Hartzman information request
[and} Triad Best of Broadway season tickets...
City of Greensboro response to a George Hartzman information request
...Sadly, there are no guarantees. Often, these restorative efforts work beautifully, says Randall Gross, a Washington consultant who helped assemble the plan.
On the other hand, Gross acknowledges, “there are some places around the country where they put in some pretty fancy changes and it really hasn’t affected the downfall of a particular area.”
The problem with socialism
is that you eventually run out of other peoples money
Margaret Thatcher
...High Point Road of yesteryear fell victim to its own success. After the mall’s fabulous debut and early years, the road leading to it developed in a haphazard way.
...So the big money simply detoured one interchange west along I-40, [Robbie] Perkins said, to Wendover Avenue, then just beginning to develop.
Meanwhile, shoppers’ fickle tastes took a dramatic turn toward the “big box” stores opening at the newly emerging interchange. And fresh competition came later in the 1990s when Friendly Shopping Center got a makeover.
So Greensboro's taxpayers may be sold by Greensboro's News and Record
on borrowing to spend more money and paying higher taxes
to reverse the adverse affects of free market capitalism
by socializing the losses of businesses on High Point Road
by pledging our kid's future income for "improvements"
that will take profits from the businesses smart enough to have moved
to I-40 Wendover and Friendly Center? '
by socializing the losses of businesses on High Point Road
by pledging our kid's future income for "improvements"
that will take profits from the businesses smart enough to have moved
to I-40 Wendover and Friendly Center? '
George Hartzman
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010
.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
6 comments:
"Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position.
As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare."
Wikipedia
"Fascism...is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology.
Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.
Fascism presents itself as a solution to the perceived benefits and disadvantages of conservatism by advocating state-controlled modernization that promotes orderly change while resisting the dangers to order in society of pluralism and independent initiative.
Paxton wrote that fascism is:
a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood...working in uneasy, but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties...
...The Nazis initially attempted to form a corporatist economic system like that of Fascist Italy, creating the National Socialist Institute for Corporatism in May 1933, which included many major economists who argued that corporatism was consistent with National Socialism..."
Wikipedia
How many tickets does $90,000 buy?
Must be discounted.
Maybe $180,000 worth for $90,000 on paper.
Seems kind of hypocrytical.
Is the Greensboro News and Record Editorial Board saying it’s OK for community leaders to lie to the public?
"Editorial: Time to move ahead
…Yes, some voters feel they were duped into approving the original $12 million earmarked for the project in a 2008 parks and recreation bond package.
…And yes, a concept that began as public/private partnership several years ago somehow has evolved into an almost entirely public venture.
…Michael G. Curran, president of the privately built Triangle Aquatic Center in Cary…questioned its estimated $14 million annual economic impact.
“I’d be surprised if you did half that amount,” he said in an interview.
The Triangle facility generates $5.3 million in economic impact from 35 events annually.
As for operating costs, Curran also offered words of caution. “There’s just a lot of things in a business plan you just don’t think about,” he said.
“I am surprised at what’s being built in Greensboro, and what is being presented,” Curran said of the estimated operating budget of $652,000.
“It makes no sense to me the numbers I’m seeing projected and what we’ve done here. I just don’t see them being met.”"
Greensboro News and Record Editorial Board
Sunday, December 20, 2009
HP Road is a victim of growth in NW GSO. Wealthy people do not choose to live near HP Road and therefore do not patronize the businesses.
It is good that the N&R laments the problem, but there may not be a solution. Pouring your childrens' money into it doesn't seem like the answer.
We will use the aquatic center to break the teeth of its proponents. However, it makes some sense to anchor public revitalization efforts at the coliseum. As Robbie said, we must go with our strengths.
Matt Brown is a martinet. Unfortunately, the ability is apparently part of his contract.
And the N&R colludes. These are old nails which need to be struck frequently.
The threat to RUCO is monstrous. We know there is a deeper story and it will be told if Vaughan's opposition continues.
Your strategy seems right to me: fight the pork, defend what works and shine a light on vested interests.
Sadly, the voters remain apathetically ignorant, greatly reducing the impact of your message. Fortunately, the N&R isn't the only paper and your message is affecting all of them.
"Revitalizing" the High Point Rd. corridor is probably just a distraction to draw attention away from the potential disaster of the downtown hotel project if the funding mechanism is approved.
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