There was a two block vacant lot in Inglewood CA which had a chain link fence around it. The city put out a call fore ideas for development and Disney responded. The city had several hearing during which they made demands on disney which had nothing to do with the development. Disney was bringing hundreds of jobs and a first-class development to the area which was sadly in need.
One day disney CEO walked past his paling office and asked what’s happening in Inglewood. Two nights later eisner and three of his staff showed up at the city council meeting. they repeated the demand for addition al “investment” money for unproven social programs and rigid restrictions on what Disney could do. eisner led his staff out without saying a word and never returned to Inglewood.
Two years later Walmart left the project after promising two other anchor stores and large shopping center. the unions got to the city and wanted to restrict Walmart;’s size and control the planning for the entire lot. Walmart said, we will build in a nearby city, thank you.
If you read bonfire of the vanities you will get a fictional view of how paralyzed some of these places are.
If I recall correctly, Walmart had trouble building stores in Washington, DC, inside the District of Columbia. And there were similar issues of the city wanting to control how it was developed, other “investments” to be required, etc.
I wonder if that’s in the Democrat playbook, that you insist on various ancillary spending to be done by companies seeking to locate in your community. But then, you can see they would rather see land stay a vacant wasteland, than be put to productive use. Because when companies such as Disney or Walmart pull out, then nothing happens in these wastelands.
I can’t believe they would rather see vacant spaces used by drug dealers and God knows what other low lifes, doing God knows what, rather than see productive use.
The shipyard here needed more space decided to build another yard in a neighboring town 40miles awat that had seen better days when it still had some industry. The city council thought they saw a way to get the whole town and especially their own neighborhoods refurbished and started making demands. The new shipyard got built elsewhere and the town did not get the one to two thousand locally highly paid jobs.