About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 18, 2018)
OPINION ®he Srttics gainesvilletimes.com Sunday, November 18, 2018 Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Submit a letter: letters@gainesvilletimes.com The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. JIM POWELL I For The Times EDITORIAL Building on a vision Revitalization must be fair to property owners, taxpayers [ THE ISSUE: The Gainesville City Council on Nov. 6 approved an ordinance banning 30 uses in the city’s Midtown Overlay Zone, including homeless shelters, crisis centers, coin laundry facilities and pawn shops. Existing businesses or nonprofits that would be banned under the new rules are being grandfathered in. J The leaders of Gainesville have grand plans for the city’s midtown area. As visions of a new skyline downtown begin to take shape — with Carroll Daniel’s new head quarters and the still anticipated Parkside condominium building, both with first floor space reserved for retail and restaurants — the council seems to be shifting its eyes back toward the portion of the city just across Jesse Jewell Parkway. The city is in the midst of pur chasing, for $10 million, the land on the midtown side of the pedestrian bridge, and it has approved new regulations for a midtown overlay zone, a 350-acre area bounded by E.E. Butler Parkway, Jesse Jewell Parkway, Queen City Parkway and the railroad. City Manager Bryan Lackey has said city officials want to see more housing and retail in the area as well as possibly office space and a hotel. The city’s aim is to encourage that by using the overlay zone to address redevelopment, allowing properties there to be treated differently than others. The midtown area is dotted with empty storefronts and dilapidated buildings. Pumping new life into the district could raise property values and give city dwellers new places to spend their cash — both of which translate into more tax revenue for the city. Some businesses in the area already have bought into the vision — with more than just words. JOMCO Construction has remod eled its building since opening in midtown about two years ago. J.R. Johnson, president of the com pany, has said “the vision that the leaders in the city have is starting to play out a little bit.” Jason Everett, owner of the Gainesville Design Center, said he’s also seen the area trending toward more retail, “which is good for people coming over from down town as the square gets a little more crowded.” The list of restricted businesses limit the rights of property owners in the area, but some businesses already were disallowed through zoning regulations, including mini warehouses, auto/motor vehicle sales and service and sexually-ori ented adult uses. Meanwhile, the city is giving prop erty owners more flexibility with increased residential and mixed-use options in the district. Revitalization is an admirable goal when done in a manner that is fair to existing and new property owners, and with an eye toward conservative stewardship of public funds. The city has spent a considerable amount on its vision. The city in 2012 spent $7.2 million to purchase Hall County’s old jail on Main Street in midtown. The plan was that Corrections Corporation of America, a private company, would continue leasing the facility for 14 years to operate a detention center for immigrants in the country illegally. The lease agreement through 2026 would “more than cover the expense,” Gainesville Mayor Danny Dunagan said at the time, noting the city would break even in seven years. But within a year, the CCA broke its lease — the city’s agreement laid out no penalty for that — leaving tax payers on the hook for the bill. By 2017, the city had demolished the jail. The city still owes about $5 million on the property. The city is now spending $10 mil lion for the land on the other side of its infamous “bridge to nowhere.” Whether private investment will follow remains to be seen, but with so much public money tied up in the revitalization effort, it is vital that plans for moving forward are struc tured to be revenue positive for the city. Enticing developers to the overlay district with promises of long-term tax breaks and special financial con siderations is a risky business at best. The suddenness of the city’s acqui sition of the latest property after years of awaiting the previous own er’s proposed development, and a lack of public discussion about plans for the area, has some questioning the city’s role in the process. Invit ing increased public input and being totally transparent in all land trans actions will go a long way toward alleviating any concerns. Amid all the talk of revitalization, there’s a nagging feeling about what will happen to the people who have been operating businesses like laun dromats or those providing beds to the homeless. Society hasn’t eradicated the prob lem of homelessness, and people still need to shop at thrift stores and wash their clothes at laundromats. By banning them in this portion of the city, these types of businesses and nonprofits are likely to be pushed into another area of the city, creating a sort of economic segregation. Pushing what city officials consider to be less than desirable businesses into ever smaller areas in the city only reinforces the idea of a neighbor hood on the wrong side of the tracks. An alternative worthy of consider ation is to control the quality of rede velopment through building codes and architectural requirements, so an upscale neighborhood can still have its laundromat or dollar store, but with a design that looks like it belongs. None of the current business own ers showed up to meetings about the changes, but the city also wasn’t required to notify the property own ers about the changes, so the likeli hood they knew about the proposal was slim. By grandfathering in the current establishments, the character of mid town isn’t changing overnight. But if revitalization comes, rent prices will increase and some may be forced out. If the city is willing to invest mil lions to demolish a jail and buy a vacant piece of property, we’d like to see it make some investments to help businesses already in the area. A rising tide should lift all boats, but it doesn’t always work out that way without someone providing options for those who may otherwise get priced out of buildings they’ve rented for years. Lee s work a reflection of age he lived Stan Lee, the reinventor of the comic book, died Monday at the ripe old age of 95. Comic books get a bad rap, although not nearly as bad as they used to. There was a time when comic books were the cause of an all-out moral panic. After the release of psychiatrist Fred Wer- tham’s book “The Seduction of the Innocent,” the Senate held hearings to grapple with the alleged moral rot of comics, which were supposedly fuel ing juvenile delinquency and moral degeneracy. Batman and Robin, you see, were secretly gay. Superman was an un- American ersatz fascist. “Superman (with the big S on his uniform — we should, I suppose, be thank ful that it is not an S.S.) needs an endless stream of JONAH GOLDBERG ever new submen, crimi- goldbergcolumn@ nals and foreign-looking people not only to justify his existence but even to make it possible,” Wer- tham wrote. The Comics Code Authority was established in 1954 to protect children from consuming Satan’s apple in cartoon form. As silly as all that was, at least the anti-comic puritans took comic books seriously. And while Wertham et al. went too far in the wrong direc tion, comics are an important window into our society. Prior to Stan Lee and Marvel Comics, super heroes were fairly two-dimensional characters. Superman was, well, just super at everything. He fought for “truth, justice and the American way.” He was also a kind of super-moralist, always knowing instantly what was right. Some writers claim he was the first “social justice warrior.” In Superman’s first adventure (Action Comics No. 1), long before he ever battled Lex Luthor, he saved a woman from being wrongly executed, stopped a senator from being blackmailed and protected a woman from her abusive husband. “Delivering justice, protecting family and stop ping corruption, Superman represented the newly expanded New Deal state,” observed Ben jamin Moore in The Washington Post. The New Deal was a real-world example of political philosopher Michael Oakeshott called “politics as the crow flies” — a rationalist approach that tries to use the state as an active participant in life to achieve desirable ends without much concern for the means. It should be no surprise that Superman transitioned from New Deal warrior to World War II warrior. He was fighting Nazis long before American troops were. Lee grew up professionally in this “Golden Age” of comics, but he also rebelled against it. While a member of the so-called Greatest Gen eration, Lee better represented the more ironic attitudes of the postwar generation. His superhe roes struggled with their powers and their moral responsibilities. Spider-Man, the quintessential Marvel character (at least until the introduction of Wolverine) was a nerdy, angst-ridden teenager who only reluctantly accepted his role and the idea that “with great power comes great respon sibility.” Lee’s heroes quarreled with each other, had romantic setbacks and sometimes even struggled to make the rent. The baby boomers, Lee’s target audience, were plagued with a great unease about living up to the legacy of their parents’ generation. “We are people of this generation,” begins the Port Huron Statement, the 1962 manifesto that largely launched the ‘60s protest era, “bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.” They believed they were special but didn’t know exactly what to do about it. This kind of ambiguity suffused Marvel’s sto rylines. The X-Men were mutants, a government- persecuted minority community, bitterly divided between assimilationists and rejectionists. Their powers were a thinly veiled metaphor for the confusion of puberty. The Thing, constantly harassed by a local street gang, hated that he had become grotesque, but when given the choice of becoming human again, he opted to keep his powers. Captain America debuted in his own comic by punching Hitler in the face on the cover, but by Vietnam he was emoting, “I’m like a dinosaur — in the cro-magnon age! An anach ronism — who’s out-lived his time! This is the day of the anti-hero — the age of the rebel — and the dissenter! It isn’t hip — to defend the establishment! — only to tear it down! And, in a world rife with injustice, greed, and endless war — who’s to say the rebels are wrong? ... I’ve spent a lifetime defending the flag — and the law! Perhaps I should have battled less — and questioned more!” Of course, there was plenty of fighting, derring- do and onomatopoetic “pows,” “bamfs” and “snikts. ” But future historians looking to under stand the near-century of Lee’s lifetime would be well-advised to look at his life’s work. Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. (The Ernies Founded Jan. 26,1947 345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501 gainesvilletimes.com EDITORIAL BOARD General Manager Editor in Chief Norman Baggs Shannon Casas Community members Cheryl Brown Mallory Pendleton David George J.C. Smith Mandy Harris Tom Vivelo Brent Hoffman To submit letters: Send by email to letters@gainesvilletimes.com or use the contact form at gainesvilletimes. com. Include name, hometown and phone number; letters never appear anonymously. Letters are limited to one per writer in a month’s time on topics of public interest and may be edited for content and length (limit 500 words). Letters may be rejected from readers with no ties to Northeast Georgia or that address personal, business or legal disputes. Submitted items may be published in print, electronic or other forms. Letters and commentary express the opinions of the authors and not of The Times.
