I look at the expansion of 28 West– with the anchor of a city-owned and taxpayer funded golf course and sports complex and with the taxpayer subsidized infrastructure as a way of spurring and directing economic development. I’m not making a value judgment on the merits of that particular expansion. Just pointing out the obvious fact that expansion was not simply the result of pure market demand and that taxpayers were called onto help provide for the necessary components to facilitate this development.

I can’t speak for Mr. Aymond (though I believe he has a more expansive notion of corporate welfare than just downtown redevelopment), but I find it funny that many of the people who oppose inner city revitalization have little qualms spending taxpayer dollars on unfettered expansion and infrastructure for sprawl developments. We need to be honest about this issue. We need to consider our fire rating, which determines our insurance rates, our police coverage, and our accessibility to resources whenever we provide tax dollars to support development, whether it’s through infrastructure or incentives.

Personally, I believe we have to reverse the trend. Part of doing that means providing the same type of energy toward inner city redevelopment that we had previously expended on sprawl.

I don’t view this through the lens of corporate welfare; I see these issues as fundamentally important to the quality of life for all citizens (and for future generations).

Our buddy over at Cenla Politics and many others who share his viewpoint are always screaming about the redevelopment of downtown and other neglected areas of our City. They claim that investing tax dollars into these areas amounts to corporate welfare. One of the best presentations at the recent Smart Growth Summit showed that in most cases, sprawl, or developing on the fringe, would not be happening if it wasn’t being so heavily subsidized. In other words, if developers had to pay the true cost of developing away from existing utilities, drainage, roads, fire / police protection, etc. it would not be viable. It would be interesting to see some local numbers that could be compared to national or regional averages.