LETTER: Lancaster Alliance / South Square promote private interests at public expense
(The following letter refers to an article “South Square housing project planners seek new grants” appearing in the Intelligencer Journal / New Era.)
“The Lancaster Alliance, a business group that promotes city revitalization”
Isn’t this sweet? Doesn’t the Lancaster Alliance sound so philanthropic?
Why doesn’t this crack reporter tell us who is involve or how they get their money?
Please note the Penn Square Partners (which originally included partner Fulton Bank) continued use of ‘non-profit’ organizations to take tax money, increase value for business holdings, and advance business interests in general – all hiding behind a non-profit front.
The project is supposed to take 14.8 million dollars and make it disappear into 62 units of 1-3 bedrooms! That comes to $238,709.67 PER UNIT! Are you kidding me? For ONE, TWO, THREE BEDROOM APARTMENTS? I could buy land and construct really nice townhouses for that much!
The single rooms are currently being rented out by the week but I guess they don’t like the people in there?
From the article: “Shoemaker, who has been the Alliance president since May, said he remains optimistic about the project.
“Everybody has been very cooperative, and I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t think this project has merit,” he said.”
Isn’t it nice that everyone is getting along to spend our tax dollars on this waste? But this sycophant says it has merit – so it must?
14.8 million taxpayer dollars is less than one-third of the cost overruns for the downtown Lancaster taxpayer-financed hotel and convention center project. Remember that the construction bids alone came in more than $22 million over budget.
The anticipated cost of this project is ONLY TWICE the amount of money spent on legal fees by the LCCCA, and taxpayers would have something to show for their money. That makes this proposal seem like a bargain!
Well, the fact is that that’s not relevant as an excuse. It’s a bad project, poorly conceived, miserably executed, while serious problems in the city continue to be ignored.