This weekend, when it seems that most of America celebrates shopping, seems to inspire discussion of the perennial topic of “Oak Ridge retail”. My recent e-mail has included both (1) cheerleading for the 3/50 Project and (2) questions about the Oak Ridge city center development (why did the mall fail? what is the city going [...]
Posts under ‘Crestpointe’
Fertilizer for the “grassroots”
Pre-election financial disclosure reports were due Thursday, and the local newspaper has reported cash receipts (including loans) for each candidate and referendum campaign. Because loans are treated as “receipts” and neither in-kind contributions (donations of goods or services; sometimes these donations are large) nor expenditures are included in the article, the numbers in the article [...]
The use of dedicated school money in the City’s Crestpointe funding scheme would be a large step down a dangerous and irresponsible path
Over on the Oak Ridger online forums, there’s been some discussion of the City’s apparent intention to get part of the proposed funding for the Crestpointe (“Target”) shopping center from money collected for the high school rebuild project. (As I explained in an earlier post here, in discussion with Mr. Steve Jenkins of the city [...]
GBT Realty’s record
A recent letter to the editor referred to a legal judgment against GBT Realty. I was not aware of the judgment, but an article about the issue has arrived in my e-mail inbox.
The question asked was whether GBT is an entity that the city should place its complete faith in, as proposed in the [...]
Why Crestpointe won’t prevent people from continuing to shop at Turkey Creek
Tim Holt has submitted a letter to the editor about a statistical analysis of shopping centers. This post is borrowed/modified from his to-be-published letter…A 1996 paper by by two university researchers, published in the Journal of Real Estate Research, examined the question: “How Critical Is a Good Location to a Regional Shopping Center?” The research [...]
The public’s unanswered questions on Crestpointe
The League of Women Voters forum on the Crestpointe proposal ended before some (most, actually) of the audience-submitted questions could be addressed.
The LWV provided a list of the unasked questions, with the idea that the groups could provide and publicize our answers. It turns out that all of the unaddressed questions were directed primarily [...]
Visualizing Crestpointe
As I stated at Tuesday night’s public forum on the Crestpointe proposal (when I spoke on the topic of “site selection and planning”), Oak Ridge is trying to make a decision about spending more than $10 million in public funds on a development project that will have long-term effects on the character of our community, [...]
What does $10.5 million really cost the taxpayers?
The “Future of Oak Ridge” group is saying that the city’s $10.5 million input to the Crestpointe project will be paid back in just 15 years by property taxes on the shopping center.
That claim is not consistent with the City’s analysis, as presented in several different public venues and posted on the City website. That [...]
Public forum on bond referendum (about Crestpointe bonds)
On the eve of early voting comes a League of Women Voters forum about the referendum for the Crestpointe bond issue:
Tuesday, May 15, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Pollard Auditorium (on the ORAU campus, above the hill from the Oak Ridge Civic Center)
LWV’s announcement says “Representatives of Citizens Oak Ridge (COR) and Future of Oak Ridge (FOR) [...]
The kind of analysis that Oak Ridge deserves to see
This is interesting: “Community Impact Analysis, Proposed SuperTarget Store, Waconia, Minnesota” (PDF file, dated September 2006). This small town in Minnesota commissioned an independent consultant study to examine community impacts of a proposed store. They did this merely to see how the store would affect the town and local businesses; there is no suggestion that [...]