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You'll be shoppin' till
you're stoppin'
Looks like here I am agreeing with the Tribune again. Or, rather, they're agreeing with me. This happens about as often as the Comet Kohoutek comes around this part of the cosmos, which I think the last time was back in '73.
If you read the Trib's Sunday editorial about the Marketplace and downtown San Luis Obispo, then you know they've decided to take part of the blame - along with me - for the demise of downtown. When the stores are all shuttered up and dust is blowing through the trash-strewn emptiness of the Downtown Center, you'll be able to point to me and the Tribune for the tragic forces that brought the once-vibrant city center to its ignoble end.
The Tribune said, in essence, that the Marketplace shopping complex should be allowed to go forward, downtown be damned, and let the invisible hand of capitalism decide who survives. Downtown merchants are probably not reading this at the moment, being preoccupied with brandishing torches and pitchforks outside the Trib's Higuera Street concrete multiplex and calling for Bill Morem's head, or any other available body parts worth stringing up the nearest palm tree.
Morem is the nameless knave behind the anonymous editorials that the Trib regularly issues forth. Sort of like me, only now you know who he is (If you want to know who I am, ask him). Morem's Sunday piece reiterated what I've said in the past here: Downtown merchants have protested any extension of the Madonna Plaza shopping area for decades - and protested when it was built, too, for that matter - proclaiming that downtown SLO will hold all the shopping attraction of the Carrizo Plains if one more nail is hammered into Madonna Plaza (wrong), Central Coast Plaza (wrong), the Promenade (wrong), and now the aforementioned Marketplace.
If the past is any indication - and it is - they'll be just as wrong about the Marketplace, which has been wending its way through the city's bureaucratic planning labyrinth for over a decade, with Ernie Dalidio dutifully following all the stupid rules and regulations the city's thrown his way.
It's simple, really - it's the battle of the developers, with all of us sitting here on the sidelines, wondering who's going to win. The guys who oppose the Marketplace are multimillionaire developers Rob Rossi, John King, and Tom Copeland, all of whom have designs on downtown SLO Town, hoping to make even more money through their own developments there. The Marketplace is competition, dreamed up by those other multimillionaire developers, the aforementioned Ernie Dalidio and Bill Bird, who hope to woo shoppers to 500,000 square feet of consumer wares and gizmos.
I'm no pal of Bird and Dalidio, and no unmarked bills have turned up with a thank you note at my back door, so forget the idea that I'm on their tax-free payroll. I just think they've got as much right to make a buck as the Ross-King-Copeland trio.
R-K-C have portrayed themselves as saviors of downtown, casting Bird and Dalidio as some sort of economic disaster duo, intent on luring patrons from the tree-lined loveliness of downtown to yet another asphalt wasteland. That was the point of a recent report paid for by R-K-C revealing that shoppers will flee downtown to line Bird and Dalidio's pockets if the Marketplace goes forward. This in contrast to a report commissioned by Bill and Ernie that said everything would be just peachy if the Marketplace opened.
This is, of course, no surprise. If I commissioned a report about how smart I am, I'd better get an IQ north of the ionosphere, or someone's getting the boot. You don't pay good money for bad results.
And, again, that's what this is all about: money. Your money, actually.
After all, the more merchants there are vying for your dollar, the better deal you're likely to get. That is, of course, one of the basic principles of good old grubby capitalism. Besides pumping over $1 million a year into city coffers through sales taxes, the Marketplace is going to give you a lot more shopping choices - which R-K-C ostensibly don't want you to have. They want you to come shop at their downtown stores. They're not saying this, of course. They're not saying much of anything. That's what their report is for.
I'm often full of it, but not this time. Growth is going to keep on growing and developers are going to keep on developing. And you're going to keep on spending.
But if by some strange alignment of the heavens it turns out that I am wrong, and the Marketplace sucks all the life juices out of downtown San Luis Obispo, leaving it with all the retail vitality of San Miguel on New Year's Day, don't blame me. Blame the Tribune.
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