Still not hitting the mark when it comes to capita
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10/5/2008
For years now St. Joseph has given alot of lip service to exploiting its historic and architectural assets to enhance the economy and quality of life here. But we really haven't moved past "Where the Pony Express Started and Jesse James Ended" (a tourism slogan from our local chamber). Slogans aside, except for a lot of bars in our "historic downtown" that found real estate prices and a burgeoning concentration of low income housing (a trend that accounts for virtually every effort at "historic rehabilitation of older structures in this city) hard to resist, no one has actually put a dent in developing the incredible number of older and architectually facinating neiborhoods here. That is unless a DENT can be read to mean a policy of demolishing old buildings, many with lots of remaining potential and structual soundness, as quickly as our fine city could dispatch a crew. Politically we have a vacuum of vision and leadership looming over this community. Our historic preservation planner is only marginally qualified to hold the job and is even less interested in his work. Our city council is interested only in seeing how fast they can dish up tax credit and abatement programs - originally designed to provide an incentive to developers to invest in our older less attractive census tracts - to developers of shopping centers and high end real estate in the "slam dunk" parts of town.
If there was one thing I could change about this town it would be the backward thinking city governors and administrators who think that you can just let the "market" take care of the problems facing our downtown and surrounding neighborhoods while they take every opportunity to steer interest away from the opportunities inherent there. It's looking a lot like the Wall Street problem: the foxes are minding the hen house.
Charles | St. Joseph, MO