Austin, TX is a great place to live. I moved here a decade and a half ago because I was living in Waco, and Austin was (and still is) the only civilized city in Texas. Grad school was over, and I was ready to get the hell out. (I cried my first night in Waco, by the way, when I realized I had committed myself to living in that cesspit of a town for at least 2 years.) I had only been out for a couple of years, and Waco's slim pickins.
Austin’s a beautiful gay-friendly town. I figured that if the city owns a nude beach with an unofficial gay area and people co-exist peacefully (although be it nakedly), It was the right spot for me.
Oh, and we have lots of trees. They’re not as big as I was used to from Tennessee, but trees are an asset to any city.
It’s a pretty liberal, progressive place and has been for a long, long time. That was also one of its charms. I’ve lived a mostly-happy life (disclaimer: sometimes life sucks no matter where you are) as an openly gay man since the day I arrived. (Notes: 1) I am not “a gay”. “Gay” is an adjective, not a noun. I’m a gay man, not an adjective. 2) I don’t have a “gay lifestyle”. I can’t afford a lifestyle, gay or straight or ambisexual. )
Although Austin is a tolerant and progressive city, it has one draw back: when you get too many liberals in the same place (especially if they’re old hippies), they start to confuse liberalism with intellect. And then they go ahead and proceed down the merry path of stupid, misguided however sincere.
Well, they’re probably sincere, but as my mother said long ago, “You can be sincere but sincerely wrong.”
That’s where the jerking knees come in.
The DOA mall more or less across the street from where I live was recently sold to a company that is going to redevelop the property. The only hitch is that they want to put in a Wal-Mart (the first urban 2-story one built from scratch, by the way). I’m surprised that when that plan was announced all the knees jerking didn’t register as a seismic event.
I sent every city council member an email in support of the project. I received responses from 2, one who pointed out that a recent study had shown that Wal-Marts were good for local business because of the increased traffic and, therefore, increased exposure. The other obviously didn’t read my email.
These are the transcripts:
This is my response to a politician that obviously didn't take the to read what I sent her before she responded.
Dear Ms. Kim,
If you read the 999 letters the same way you read mine, then you should not count on having 1000 opponents to the development. I WROTE SUPPORTING THE DEVELOPMENT. You should probably go back through them and make sure your count is accurate.
As for sharing my view, you don't. In fact, you are acting like the typical Austin knee-jerker that drives me up the wall.
Let me reiterate:
Anderson @ Burnet has been a retail hub since this neighborhood was first developed.
Any project that utilizes the site to its highest and best will cause the same problems that are being cited by Wal-Mart's opponents.
I live across the street from site, so I think my opinion matters more than people who live at Lamar @ Morrow or 38th @ Shoal Creek because they don't live in my neighborhood and I do.
The mall has been a corpse waiting for a proper burial for decades.
No one else has shown any interest in redeveloping the site.
As for many of those who oppose the project, cloaking dislike for particular retailer in concern for a neighborhood they don't even live is dishonest, unethical and immoral. Do you honestly think there would be this hue and cry if Whole Foods or Central Market or HEB, for that matrer, wanted to build one of its very, very large stores on the same site? If you answer that question honestly, I think you would be force to concede that this has nothing to do with traffic or noise or anything else except a personal dislike of a particular retailer.
One final thing: if you and the others don't stop jerking your knees so often and fast, you're going to start getting some pretty bad cramps in your legs. And knee jerking is not exercise, except maybe as one in foolishness.
Sincerely.
Name Withheld
This is the response that made no sense whatsoever
----- Original Message -----
From:
To: Name Withheld
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2007 2:31 PM
Subject: RE: Northcross Wal-Mart
Dear Mr. ,
I have received over 1,000 e-mails and letters from Austinites regarding the redevelopment at Northcross Mall. I share your concerns passionately on this issue and want to update you on my and my colleagues’ activity on this subject.I have heard your desire to create a mixed-use, small business- and pedestrian-friendly development. That quest aligns with my promise to make Austin the “most livable city in America.” If that sounds idealistic, we know that it is not. We pride ourselves in being one of the top cities in America in which to live, work, and hang out. We created it, and it is our responsibility to protect it.The Northcross Mall development has passed the permitting, site plan, and zoning phases. The Council scrutinized the process and found no impropriety by city staff in approving the Northcross Mall development request.Regardless, I am monitoring the on-going process. I am researching legal options that may improve the situation for the neighborhoods surrounding Northcross Mall. This is a tough situation for everyone: neighborhoods, developers, environmentalists, elected officials, and those who just plain care about Austin’s smart growth. My colleagues on the Council and I have limited authority in this situation although we continue to investigate and brainstorm viable possibilities. So, what have we done in spite of our limitations? Though this is not retroactive, we have learned from this experience and have taken action within our authority. We recently passed the big box ordinance which does the following:
· Expands public awareness and involvement in similar situations that present themselves in the future;
· Requires a conditional use permit for projects larger than 100,000 square feet.
Wal-Mart has notified the City that it intends to decrease its development from 200,000 square feet to 191,500 of inside and outside store size. I have fought vigorously, along with my colleagues, for a further reduction in size although it has been an uphill battle. Still, we can learn from this experience and together, we can work to ensure it will be avoided as we grow and move forward.I will continue to work on this issue as your elected representative. In the meantime, I need to continue to hear about your workable, reasonable resolutions to developments that can adversely affect our future.Hang in there with me and we’ll keep working as a team to keep Austin awesome and unbelievably livable in every way that matters to us. I rely on you for information and ideas.We owe it to ourselves, our children, and Austin’s future. You know, we may not be here to see Austin’s long-range future but have a responsibility now to help shape it.I am here to serve you and I take that responsibility very seriously. Thank you for caring enough to give me the opportunity to work with you on the things that matter to all of us.
Warmest regards,
Jennifer KimCouncil Member, Place 3
This is the second letter
From: Jeff [mailto:deeroscar@sbcglobal.net] Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2007 2:36 PMTo: Wynn, Will; Dunkerley, Betty; Martinez, Mike [Council Member]; Kim, Jennifer; Leffingwell, Lee; McCracken, Brewster; Cole, SherylSubject: Northcross Wal-Mart
I have written the entire city council and received responses from only one member regarding my support of the planned Wal-Mart at the former Northcross Mall. Unlike many of the people protesting the development, I live and work only a few hundred feet away. Not 10, 20 or 30 blocks away, where the impact would be insignificant.
I'm across the street and have been for several years, watching that Mall slowly die. It's about time someone did something with that property. It has been lying fallow for decades. Ask where the opposition to this development lives. How close are they? And should they really have a voice in what happens in MY neighborhood?
Their latest gimmick is that Wal-Mart will kill locally owned businesses. Try as I will, I cannot think of a locally-owned business that they would compete with. Alamo Draft House? Terra Toys? Thundercloud? The locally-owned businesses in this neighborhood have their own niche market and do not even carry the same kinds of merchandise as Wal-Mart. The closest thing I can think of that resembles a locally-owned business that might face competition is SteinMart. Not locally-owned and carrying a totally different inventory that Wal-Mart.
As far as Wal-Mart's pay scale, they pay what the market demands. If the people who work there want more money, why don't they get another job? And why would anyone work for them in the first place if it's that bad? Maybe it's the best job they can get. There is a bottom layer of the socio-economic scale living in our backyards that we don't want to acknowlege. No one protests that the people that work at the Exxon station next to Northcross make less than $10.00 an hour, judging from help-wanted signs I've seen. The same goes for any number of subsistance-level workers within a few blocks of the site. Why does no one care about them?
In today's economy, where lack of skill equals subsitance income, has anyone considered what adding a couple of hundred jobs, low-paying though they be, would do for any number of families?
When you are poor and uneducated with no marketable skills, you take what you can get. Have you considered how many people willing to work an honest day will not have that opportunity?
When will you listen to the people who actually live in the neighborhood? We're not as vocal, but our motivations are not knee-jerk reactions to a major corporation. This has nothing to do with traffic or crime or employment standards. It is a cloaked attempt to keep a single retailer from opening another store. It is backed by slippery slope arguments that would not survive an elementary debate class. In short, it is insincere, false and hollow from its core.
Ask those folks commuting into my neighborhood to raise havoc how they would feel about a Whole Foods with identical square footage and traffic moving in. Do I have to tell you the likely answer?
Now factor in that I live across the street and me and my disabled partner could not afford to shop at Whole Foods, since they have gone as equally corporate as Wal-Mart, raised prices and will probably close down the Sun Harvest also across the street since they bought it's parent company a few months ago.
I actually live and work in the neighborhood, and plan to for a long time to come. I bought a new car 3 months ago and have barely 1000 miles on it because we rarely go out of the neighborhood.
The next time someone brings this topic up, please preface it with "And where do you live, exactly." I'm tired of carpet-baggers coming into my neighborhood, raising hell and then going home to where anything that happens here will have no effect on them.
My challenge: which of you has the spine to do it?
Name Withheld
PS--I vote. Always.
This is the original mesage
From: Jeff [mailto:deeroscar@sbcglobal.net] Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2007 2:36 PMTo: Wynn, Will; Dunkerley, Betty; Martinez, Mike [Council Member]; Kim, Jennifer; Leffingwell, Lee; McCracken, Brewster; Cole, SherylSubject: Northcross Wal-Mart
I have written the entire city council and received responses from only one member regarding my support of the planned Wal-Mart at the former Northcross Mall. Unlike many of the people protesting the development, I live and work only a few hundred feet away. Not 10, 20 or 30 blocks away, where the impact would be insignificant.
I'm across the street and have been for several years, watching that Mall slowly die. It's about time someone did something with that property. It has been lying fallow for decades. Ask where the opposition to this development lives. How close are they? And should they really have a voice in what happens in MY neighborhood?
Their latest gimmick is that Wal-Mart will kill locally owned businesses. Try as I will, I cannot think of a locally-owned business that they would compete with. Alamo Draft House? Terra Toys? Thundercloud? The locally-owned businesses in this neighborhood have their own niche market and do not even carry the same kinds of merchandise as Wal-Mart. The closest thing I can think of that resembles a locally-owned business that might face competition is SteinMart. Not locally-owned and carrying a totally different inventory that Wal-Mart.
As far as Wal-Mart's pay scale, they pay what the market demands. If the people who work there want more money, why don't they get another job? And why would anyone work for them in the first place if it's that bad? Maybe it's the best job they can get. There is a bottom layer of the socio-economic scale living in our backyards that we don't want to acknowlege. No one protests that the people that work at the Exxon station next to Northcross make less than $10.00 an hour, judging from help-wanted signs I've seen. The same goes for any number of subsistance-level workers within a few blocks of the site. Why does no one care about them?
In today's economy, where lack of skill equals subsitance income, has anyone considered what adding a couple of hundred jobs, low-paying though they be, would do for any number of families?
When you are poor and uneducated with no marketable skills, you take what you can get. Have you considered how many people willing to work an honest day will not have that opportunity?
When will you listen to the people who actually live in the neighborhood? We're not as vocal, but our motivations are not knee-jerk reactions to a major corporation. This has nothing to do with traffic or crime or employment standards. It is a cloaked attempt to keep a single retailer from opening another store. It is backed by slippery slope arguments that would not survive an elementary debate class. In short, it is insincere, false and hollow from its core.
Ask those folks commuting into my neighborhood to raise havoc how they would feel about a Whole Foods with identical square footage and traffic moving in. Do I have to tell you the likely answer?
Now factor in that I live across the street and me and my disabled partner could not afford to shop at Whole Foods, since they have gone as equally corporate as Wal-Mart, raised prices and will probably close down the Sun Harvest also across the street since they bought it's parent company a few months ago.
I actually live and work in the neighborhood, and plan to for a long time to come. I bought a new car 3 months ago and have barely 1000 miles on it because we rarely go out of the neighborhood.
The next time someone brings this topic up, please preface it with "And where do you live, exactly." I'm tired of carpet-baggers coming into my neighborhood, raising hell and then going home to where anything that happens here will have no effect on them.
My challenge: which of you has the spine to do it?
PS--I vote. Always.
This is the original message
Dear City Council Members,I live right across the street from Northcross Mall and work in a building adjacent to it, and I am both excited and anxious about the mall's redevelopment. I have hoped for years that someone would find a use for the site that realized its full potential, and now someone has proposed just that. That's why I'm excited. But I'm anxious that the hysteria about the inclusion of a WalMart in the redevelopment has incited will unduly delay the project or perhaps even derail it.
I attended the open house at the Norris Center, inspected the plans carefully, talked to people and came away with a good feeling. In fact, most of the people I heard were happy that there would be a large grocery, pharmacy and department store so close by. (The protesters only showed up for the cameras. They were nowhere in sight when I was there.) Many of the people there were older retired people for whom convenience is a value-added factor. And if you look at demographics of the neighborhoods immediately surrounding the site, there are many older and retired people. At 42, I'm one of the youngest people around.
Finally, much of the opposition to this project is coming from outside the neighborhood. They mostly live in ones that abut the ones in the immediate area of the mall, judging from where I've seen signs opposing the development. I'm not sure why someone why lives a few blocks off Lamar or Koenig think they live in my neighborhood, but they don't. The project will have little, if any, impact on them because they are too far away.
So I ask you to listen to someone who actually lives in the neighborhood. Any development that utilizes the property to its highest and best use will generate traffic and have the same issues as would adding a WalMart into the mix. The opposition largely lives too far away to have a credible say in the matter and is motivated by a general, knee-jerk loathing of WalMart as a corporate giant.
Please do all you can to see that this project moves forward (within the strict guidelines that the city lays out, of course). It will be an asset to the community, generate tax revenue that could have gone to the suburbs and finally do something about the til-now wasted potential of the site.
Thank you for your consideration.
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