Letter #1:
Is “The Crossings” project still alive?
The request for taxpayer dollars to rebuild the US30 – Harrisburg Pike interchange has been rejected TWICE, and High has a long record of demanding substantial taxpayer subsidies before proceeding with certain projects.
High’s new shopping center on Lincoln Highway East is under construction, and already stealing tenants from other existing shopping centers. Meanwhile, retail sales nationwide are in the doldrums, and are likely to remain that way for a long time.
This would be a great time for High to quietly back away from “The Crossings” and let it drop.
Letter #2:
High Real Estate Group has no plans to “back away” from this project.
Last month, the Harrisburg Pike Transportation Coordinating Committee applied for a federal grant in a new economic incentive program called TIGER II. In addition to the request for funds for the Rt. 30/Harrisburg Pike interchange, there is also a request for money to be used to widen a four-tenths mile stretch of Harrisburg Pike, running in both directions from The Crossings. As soon as HREG gets this money, the bulldozers can start to roll.
If you don’t want this to happen, you need to immediately contact Ray LaHood, Secretary, U. S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington D.C. 20590. Tell him you don’t want public money to be used for private benefit.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe “The Crossings” is a cookie cutter outlet center, one of many other Crossing outlet centers on the East Coast. It has many of the same stores that are in Park City. Could it be the beginning of an outlet row…..if the effect of the Crossings on Park City is devastating, High could have a new project transforming Park City into more outlets. And the beat goes on……..finally Lancaster will get the picture and we will become just another town overrun with outlet malls, fast food places, rubbish, crime, traffic snarls, etc. This is only the beginning, I am afraid, with no end in sight.
What High Industries will be arguing is that the public improvement project will enable the private investment thus giving a multiplier effect. The unions and contractors will support it because jobs in this sector have been hit hardest.
The arguments against it seem to be: 1. We clearly do not need another shopping center. There are vacancies all over and we continue to build? 2. Overbuilding causes other locations to go bankrupt land foreclosed upon leaving some bargain properties for the larger companies to absorb 3. These bankruptcies cost millions to banks, creditors and shopkeepers 3. Losses in vacancy rates are subsidized by taxpayers, creating a government “hedge fund” without which many of these projects would never have been built.4. The capital and labor expended for these needless projects would be much better spent on things we really need like a modern sewer piping system for Lancaster city that does not pump billions of gallons of sewage each year into the lower Conestoga and Susquehanna rivers and the bay. Unfortunately projects like these do not have the built in tax code subsidies.
But banks seem to love these large real estate development projects, many of them useless, since the whole country is strewn with vacant offices, retail stores, and luxury condominiums . . . . but, hey, the banks which financed all these projects did get bailed out of their failures and now we all own their toxic assets ( in addition to our devalued homes). So, if you are a contractor, developer, bank, or labor union member let’s just do some more of the same.
A county or city planner or politician is not going to oppose these useless projects, which are supported by large corporations and labor unions. We all saw what happened to a couple of very honest and capable politicians who tried to argue against another big High Industries project. So, the antique machinery and equally tired and old vision of business, capital, and labor, grinds on, like the dinosaurs, until they (and we) collapse in a sea of our own, beautifully developed, mud. Why not build some things we really need and even use public and private funds together to get them done? Another shopping mall subsidized by millions of taxpayer dollars would be a crime.