By: Diane Benjamin
In Bloomington and Normal government believes they are required to spend your money to create economic development. Peoria evidently doesn’t. Maybe it’s because Peoria is too broke – they have made significant budget cuts. Maybe broke government is the key to allowing the private sector to flourish.
See this story: https://www.pjstar.com/news/20191210/kim-blickenstaff-purchases-stake-in-peoria-armory-plans-renovation
Excerpts:
Bloomington had to buy the Scottish Rite temple here to “save it”. It is now the completely non-transparent money sucking BCPA. It may have taken time, but Peoria’s is now privately owned and will be repurposed in a way that creates value to the community and tax revenue.
Same goes for a private sports complex! I hear the development of Nord fields in south-west Bloomington is going great. It is private and has a lot of community support. In addition to soccer, lacrosse might be played there too.
Someday I hope both Councils have a discussion: What is government’s job?
It isn’t economic development, that is nothing more than picking winners and losers using your money. They pay no price for being wrong. Taxpayers pay the price for decades however. (Coliseum, BCPA, Uptown, etc)
Create an environment where the private sector can thrive and it will. Rumor is BN Advantage is dead. The EDC isn’t doing much better. Good.
I will be watching to see if the Peoria developers try to get any tax money, hopefully they won’t.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
This is exactly how it needs to be done. The rocket scientists in our “leadership” should take heed that their ideas about building a successful profitable enterprise with public money DOES NOT work. There is NO Substitute for the free market and private investment to create real economic development.
“There is NO Substitute for the free market and private investment to create real economic development.”
Tell that to Bernie…..and Liz….and most Millennials.
Remember…..many polls show a majority voting Communist next year.
We. Are. DOOMED!
Glad to see some economic development led by the private sector. Fingers crossed. Of course, Koos and Renner hate private sector-led development because it means control is in the hands of people and the marketplace, not government ideologues trying to shape and mold our lives to their image. I fear that it will be some time before the private sector invests in Bloomington-Normal because of the undue control applied by the local governments to economic development and businesses in general. Renner and Koos try to blame the private sector by saying it doesn’t do enough so therefore they (i.e. government) have to lead the way. This is garbage. The private sector is staying out as a direct result of how these two (and their cronies) govern the community. I haven’t heard anything about or from BN Advantage or the EDC in some time now. Zach is still listed as the email contact for BN Advantage on their Facebook page despite having left to work for Rivian back in October. Oops! The social media accounts (FB and Twitter) of both BN Advantage and the EDC have been silent for several months now. Pretty difficult to attract and help grow businesses if you don’t communicate. An old friend used to tell me that the best thing a business owner can do to support economic development is to focus their energy on growing and expanding their own business. Sounds a lot better than wasting one’s time participating in these nonsense organizations manipulated and essentially controlled by local government and its cronies.
This is not a business friendly area (unless you are State Farm of course). Until we can remove this cabal of self-important arrogant gang of cronies and socialists, no one is going to make any significant investment in anything here. Mayor Koos has to be getting nervous about Rivian? They missed their hiring quotas and they don’t seem to be making any cars yet?
Agreed. The private sector will continue to avoid BN and sit on their wallets. Rivian was and still is a long shot. Koos has done some recent cheerleading, talking up Rivian as a success and how it will help the community. Yet, they missed milestones and no cars. Hmm. Wonder if he feels the heat.
Even Decatur is smarter. They have people trying to restore the Decatur Pump House. But the government supports them with words and hopes that an investor can be found, they are not wasting taxpayer money however to do this. A sad day when Decatur proves to be smarter than the clowns here.
Agree with everyone’s comments on this topic…leave these decisions to the private sector/free market. I am still not convinced that the tax payers did not participate in the purchase of the old State Farm downtown building. There was a phrase used in an article about the State Farm building that was pretty telling – “public/private partnership” I read that to mean – tax payers will be paying for the SF building somehow. I was in support of State Farm tearing down their old outdated office building that they were unable to sell. SF determined demolishing the building was the best business decision for State Farm. BUT the “emotional minority” decided the building should be bought for sentimental reasons….and I bet the rest of us ended up paying for that building too!