[Vision2020] The Future

[Kit Craine]

For those of you who want a voice in the future of Moscow, may I 
suggest contacting Gary Riedner (griedner at ci.moscow.id.us) and asking 
to be included in the New Cities discussion? The City has hired this 
outfit to help develop a vision for the future of the city. That may be 
one way to be heard, officially, by the people who can make or break 
the dream.

Kit Craine.

On Jul 6, 2005, at 1:02 PM, Phil Nisbet wrote:

> Chris and Andreas
>
> This is exactly the debate I was hoping to see when I first posted to 
> the subject.
>
> We all know that the U of I needs to have a focus on being able to get 
> and hold grant generating programs.  I think that Chris's point is 
> that growth in Fairbanks has benefited from getting exactly those 
> kinds of programs and that those in turn have lead to use of 
> brownfields area being redeveloped into retail space.  Big Boxes for 
> the sake of Big Boxes are no salvation and Andreas is correct that we 
> can not have a stable economy here based on retail, especially retail 
> that is not locally based.
>
> So what programs can we work to see move in and how can we as a 
> community make the area more business friendly for the kinds of 
> development we want to see in the future?
>
> For that matter, what are acceptable developments in things like light 
> manufactuing or particular industries that we would want to see drawn 
> here?
>
> Phil Nisbet
>
>> From: Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com>
>> Reply-To: Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com>
>> To: Chris Storhok <cstorhok at co.fairbanks.ak.us>
>> CC: Mark Seman <FCS at moscow.com>, Phil Nisbet <pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com>, 
>> vision2020 at moscow.com
>> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The Future
>> Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 16:23:28 -0700
>>
>> Chris --
>>
>> Though not all big-box stores are drains on the economy -- CostCo and
>> Bed, Bath, and Beyond are good examples -- some big-box development
>> demonstrably has negative effects on local economies, especially small
>> economies. Retail pays less and has fewer benefits than any sector of
>> the economy than food service.
>>
>> We cannot compete with Spokane as a nexus for big-box development. Any
>> attempt to do so w idiocy -- we don't have the population base to
>> support it. Unless we bring in more shoppers from outside Moscow --
>> and we don't have any coherent plan to do so -- the only town that
>> will show any net economic benefit from another Wal-Mart is
>> Bentonville, AR. We cannot have an economy that cannibalizes itself:
>> fewer, lower-paying jobs replacing local retail* will simply Hoover
>> money out of the local economy -- and that's not even including the
>> bribes in tax write-offs it would require to make them come.
>>
>> Retail cannot save Latah county. Relying on retail is a sucker's bet.
>>
>> -- ACS
>
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