Here's an interesting twist (as reported on a DMN blog) on the revitalization of downtown, which I like in the abstract but am not so sure about in practice: The city is considering establishing a subsidized loan program for prospective low- to middle-income condominium buyers downtown in an effort to help build the downtown residential community. But aren't these the same condos that, for the most part, the city has been subsidizing on the builder side with hundreds of millions invested to get development going in the first place? So as taxpayers, we've invested in building many of the downtown condos, even though we don't own them, and now we're going to help finance them — we're grabbing both ends of the stick pretty hard, it seems.
Again, I have always liked the idea of revitalizing downtown, but we must be closing in on a billion dollars of public subsidies in the central city at some point. And if we had to subsidize the construction of many of the projects downtown to help "seed" the residences, and now if we have to help "seed" the purchase of condos to ensure people buy them, how will we ever know if downtown is actually prospering and developing or if we're simply pumping so much money into the place that all of the "green" insulation being jammed in the walls is really just shredded tax dollars?
Come to think of it, all of this is making the taxpayer-subsidized convention center hotel — also downtown — look like a pretty good deal. At least, for the $500 million or so we're pumping into that deal, we'll own the darn thing.
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