The Observation Deck

If you like independent businesses . . . Locally owned businesses . . . Businesses that give a place its local personality, rather than stamp it with the cookie-cutter homogeny of highway exits and so many shopping malls . . . vacant lots are a problem.

If you don't care about those things, it's easier to look at vacant lots as an opportunity.

But let's assume you do care that Local creativity --rather than the likes of Bob Evans, McDonalds, etc--define the city.

The problem is that very few local businesses--especially restaurants, bars, and the unique botiques that make Lakewood what it is -- very few of them have the money for new construction.

If you've got a vacant lot in Lakewood, odds are very strong that whatever goes there will be a chain store, restaurant franchise, drug store, or another example of something already to be found in copious supply elsewhere.

michael gill wrote:If you've got a vacant lot in Lakewood, odds are very strong that whatever goes there will be a chain store, restaurant franchise, drug store, or another example of something already to be found in copious supply elsewhere.

Sometimes we are better off with a vacant lot.

Before the Get Go was built, before the new Drug Mart was a reality and before Value World there was an opportunity to build new housing and finish Rock Port, to attract new residents and build a more vibrant economy. That future is closed to us. Apartments along Detroit would have provided customers for all those new downtown stores advertising 40% off.

Cities in this region are not really competing for jobs or economic development; they are competing for residents. And not just any residents but taxpayers and people with disposable income.

That's why Cuyahoga County is spending so much money to convince people to move out of Lakewood and move to Downtown Cleveland.

Bill Call wrote:That's why Cuyahoga County is spending so much money to convince people to move out of Lakewood and move to Downtown Cleveland.

Ed wouldn't do that to Us, would he?

Bill Call wrote:Cities in this region are not really competing for jobs or economic development; they are competing for residents.

Spot on, Bill!

Bill Call wrote:And not just any residents but taxpayers and people with disposable income.

But how, then, do We dispose of the people who are already here who are not "taxpayers with disposable income." Send them back across W117th from whence they came?