[Abathar]

I read about this a couple of days ago and the first thing I thought of is payback to Granholm, GE and NBC.

Are they trying to tell us that there aren’t enough buildings available in Michigan to suit their needs? They have to use yours and mine money to build a fancy new one? It’s an engineering facility with white collar workers, how the hell many “tech centers” are sitting vacant in Michigan right now? Hundreds?

[grellis]

Easily hundreds, if you compare the cost of building from scratch versus modifying an existing property...and therein lies (lays? whatev!) an untold cost: While these brand-spanking new buildings are going up, vacant commercial props are dragging values down, down, down. Those vacant commercial buildings spread like mushrooms in spring rain. A strip mall with ten storefronts, three vacant, soon becomes an empty strip mall. The owner of the property has to raise the rent on the seven remaining to cover the loss of the three, and pretty soon those seven move elsewhere or close for good. Ditto office buildings. Entire floors can empty out in a matter of months. Those vacancies equal tremendous property tax losses. Never ending spiral. But hey, we have shiny new buildings! I'm blown away, aren't you?