[ScreamingFist]

Good luck with your town. I honestly hope you can spare some of the original beauty, but I do believe in free enterprise and if someone wants to sell their land then I believe it is their right.

I agree....my property, my choice. Until the last few years, many parts of western Oklahoma were going ghost town. Now we have a natural gas boom on the Anadarko basin.....they can't drill wells fast enough out here. The economy is thriving, jobs are plentiful.....we even have starbucks (rolling my eyes). I believe in capitalism and free enterprise but, hey, I want MY kids to see the old brick banks and museums also.......the big corporations can keep their damn hands off a few small buildings in the middle of nowhere, IMHO.

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

I think you and I are going in circles here. You are happy that there are jobs, happy that more tax money is coming into town, right?

Let's step back - suppose someone had owned a small store in town. It supported his family nicely, then his kids moved away. He retired, no one wanted to buy the building so it sat and fell into disrepair.

None of the kids live in town any longer but Starbucks wants that piece of property, and makes an offer.

Do you really think that just because you'd like your kids to see the old buildings that you have any right to complain when the legal owner of that property sells it?

[cowtowney]

I believe in capitalism and free enterprise but, hey, I want MY kids to see the old brick banks and museums also.......the big corporations can keep their damn hands off a few small buildings in the middle of nowhere

Then, why don't you get off your butt and buy them and preserve them, instead of whining about the good old days. Maybe you can figure out how to make them pretty and useful. See how easy it is. I've been there done that and had people like you trying to tell me what to do with my buildings even though they didn't have an economic stake in it. I own them now and have preserved older buildings. It's not cheap to do. There are incentives, but frequently those are not enough. Jump on in.