If you know anything about Manchester road you know that it is packed with cars, lined with shops and a pain in the butt when you're in a hurry. It has nearly every established chain discount store there is - wal-mart, home depot, sams, lowes, target - as well as many small private individually owned businesses.
One particular corner, Manchester Rd. and hwy 141, is home to a Saturn car dealer, printing company and photographer. The city of manchester has decided that this isn't a good enough use of the property and want to use eminent domain to force these business owners out in order to give the land to another business owner. How does that make sense? Why is the other business better than the ones that are already established? And why does Manchester Rd. need another big box discount chain?
What can you do? Well for starters you can visit http://www.savemanchester.com/ to find out more about the issue, sign a petition and email the aldermen for the area.
What the?! Manchester is crazy enough as it is, leave it be. This will only make things worse or as Bartok from Anastasia would say "This will only end in tears."
ReplyDeleteDid you sign the petition/email aldermen...I feel REALLY strongly about this issue - like you said, manchester is crazy enough as it is!
ReplyDeleteHaven't signed it, but I will.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of traffic, it's simply not right for a government to take property from someone and give it to someone else. Although we don't think about it a lot, our society operates on the notion that our property cannot simply be taken away from us by authorities, except in rare and near-extraordinary circumstances.
ReplyDeleteThings like this and the Wal-Mart deal in Maplewood are good examples of why government must be limited and what happens when it isn't. At these points, government crosses the line into racketeering.
eminent domain and tiff sounded good on paper but in reality it has become a diaster, it was created to help build the economics in areas like north st. louis, wellston, jennings, ect. areas that really need the economic growht and impact not de peres and richmond heights or the chesterfied valley commons - little is known how all this amlls and places are being built with tiff money ... the best thing about walmart is they build in an area the tiff runs out in 5 - 7 years so they threaten to take their business elsewhere so the city grants them a tiff 1/2 mile down the road - doesn't make any sense to me cause i would just allow then to leave its not like the city is recieving any taxes from corporations like this. Maybe if the government would stop handing out tiff like it was candy - our cities would actually improve. the only good thing i see with tiff money right now is that they are buiding a shopping center at lucus and hunt and west florrisant which is a blanted area that needs the development ... or at least i would believe it is.
ReplyDeleteelizabeth