About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 16, 2018)
OPINION ®he £ttttcs ★ gainesvilletimes.com Sunday, December 15, 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 A great deal — of questions S10M land purchase gives city control while rolling dice with taxpayers’ funds [ THE ISSUE: The city of Gainesville closed Nov. 19 on a 6.8 acre property at 110 Jesse Jewell Parkway after the Northeast Georgia Health System first made the $10M offer and then approached the city to request it take over the contract. City officials have said they want to have control over future development in midtown, which they hope can be revitalized. J Gainesville officials seemed to be in quite a hurry to spend $10 mil lion to control a prime piece of real estate that had been sitting vacant in midtown for more than a decade. Amid their rush, officials didn’t get an appraisal on the property. An appraiser told The Times that downtown property sold recently has gotten anywhere from about $700,000 an acre to $2.7 million an acre. The city paid Gainesville City Center LLC $1.47 million per acre for this land. The city in 2008 sold a 1-acre piece of this land for $2 million to City View Plaza LLC, which later became Gainesville City Center LLC. It was the appraised value of the land at the time. The 6.8 acres on the midtown side of the pedestrian bridge is no doubt a unique and prominent property. The price may be appropriate, but it’s hard to say without having an appraisal. And the purchase was announced at a meeting for which the public agenda had no mention of this deal. Though legal, the city doesn’t gar ner trust from us or its residents when it spends $10 million without any public input or appraisal. City officials are responsible to the taxpayers when spending funds, whether those funds are directly from property taxes or from a capi tal fund including transfers from other funds and hotel/motel fees. We have to admit to being more than a little curious about a fund from which the city can write a $10 million check whenever the notion strikes, and in which it says there are millions more if needed. What Gainesville gained with the purchase is control. Officials still want to see the land developed, but it became clear years ago that a planned $35 mil lion City View Center featuring a 13-story hotel and two 11-story office buildings was not going to happen. Those dreams from city officials and the developers at one time included 8,000 square feet of retail space, a 5,000-square-foot confer ence area, 995 parking spaces and an enclosed pedestrian walkway over Jesse Jewell leading to what was then the Georgia Mountains Center. Construction of at least part of that development was to start in 2009. The Great Recession slowed development across the county and the project stalled. Meanwhile, the city pushed for ward with the pedestrian bridge, which was meant to “pull every thing together” and “unify the whole area” between downtown and midtown. The bridge spanning Jesse Jewell Parkway opened in the fall of 2012. It was quickly dubbed the bridge to nowhere, as land on its southern end remained vacant despite the grand plans. The nickname has stuck so well there’s a craft beer named after it. But Mayor Danny Dunagan said then that it was “the bridge to the future.” Six years since the bridge was completed, the land on the other side is still vacant, but perhaps we’ve finally reached Dunagan’s future, in which the city realizes a revitaliza tion of the gritty, industrial midtown, an area of about 212 acres bounded by Industrial Boulevard, Queen City Parkway, E.E. Butler Parkway and Jesse Jewell Parkway. The economy and real estate market have ticked up significantly since the city last tried to get the land developed. And now might be just the right time for the city to involve itself in securing the future of midtown. But exactly how the city has involved itself in the process, and the philosophy behind doing so, is certainly worthy of some public discussion. The mayor says developers are interested in the property. Where were those developers when the property was owned by Gainesville City Center? Can the city do better as property developers than those in the private sector? Ask elected officials about the move and they all circle back to control of the property. The mayor still wants to see a convention center. At least a couple of council members say they don’t want to see medical offices. Hospital officials suggested residential housing for future doctors in training. Meanwhile Northeast Georgia Health System also gained control in this deal. The city agreed to allow the health system the right to prevent competing medical busi nesses on the property. Northside Hospital was never actually interested in the property, despite rumors to the contrary, but now if it or any other competitor wants to locate on this property, the city has agreed to limit that free market competition. The city now finds itself in control of development for that property and that of the old Hall County jail on Main Street in midtown, which the city purchased in 2012 for $7.2 million. That expense was supposed to be more than covered by lease pay ments from a private prison com pany that was already occupying the space, according to the mayor. Within a year, the prison firm broke its lease — the city’s agree ment laid out no penalty for that — leaving taxpayers on the hook for the bill. By 2017, the city demolished the jail. The city still owes about $5 mil lion on the jail property, but says it may soon have news on develop ment plans for it. We’d love to see midtown revital ized, bringing in tax revenue and creating the envisioned artsy, cool part of town with room for some thing like a brewery or distillery, art galleries and good food. For more than a decade we’ve been waiting for what “could be” to materialize. At this point, the city has some $20 million invested in property ownership in midtown, betting on a future interest by private enter prise that will justify the land spec ulation with public funds. To date, that interest hasn’t materialized; we hope it does, and soon. We also hope it doesn’t come at the expense of massive tax abatements used as a lure to bring investors to town. Maybe Trump cant win 2020, but Democrats can still lose Donald Trump probably can’t win the 2020 presidential election, but the Democrats can lose it. What I mean is that in a contest between Trump and a generic Democrat, Trump would almost surely lose if the current political climate holds through 2020. Accord ing to a Fox News poll this week, 38 percent of respondents said they would “definitely” or “probably” vote for Trump, while 55 per cent said they would “definitely” or “prob ably” vote for someone else. Trump’s boosters are often quick to dis miss the polls, claiming they were wrong in 2016, when everyone said he had no chance of winning. The problem with this defense is that the national polls were actually pretty accurate in 2016. If you average out the 13 final national polls of 2016, they showed Hill ary Clinton ahead by 3.1 percentage points. She won the popular vote — the only thing national polls measure — by 2.1 percentage points. Trump carried the Electoral College because he won Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by 0.7 points each and Michigan by 0.2 points. A mere 78,000 votes carried the day. Most presidents work assiduously to build on the coalition that brought them to power. President Trump has done almost the opposite, catering to his base while doing almost everything he can to alienate suburban Republicans and independents, which is why the GOP got shellacked in the midterms. So if Trump runs — which is probably a bigger “if” than many people think — the cards are stacked against him. Fortu nately for him, the Democrats will not nomi nate someone named Generic Democrat. Instead, the Democrats are poised to re create the same dynamic that got Trump the GOP nomination in the first place. While it’s technically true that Trump beat 16 oppo nents, as he likes to say, the truth is a bit more complicated. Trump never won a majority of votes in the primaries. He benefitted from a collective action problem in which various candidates defeated each other while a sticky plurality of voters stuck with Trump. If the field had been narrower, with only two or three contenders other than Trump, his base of support might not have been enough. But with each additional player, the number of votes he needed to win shrank. Right now, it’s almost easier to list the number of prominent Democrats who aren’t thinking of running. No one knows for sure, but estimates on the number of potential Democratic candidates range from 20 to 40. In that kind of field, the ability to attract a small but passionate cadre of supporters will be more important than arguments about electability. Thus, there will be an enormous incentive to replicate the Trump model of taking unorthodox positions, stated as boldly as possible, in order to win over the most pas sionate ideologues and activists. Moreover, the mood among Democrats is more than a little analogous to the mood among Republicans in 2016. Hillary Clinton was a uniquely disliked and feared figure among conservatives. The argument that America would be “over” if she won found purchase among millions of Republican vot ers. One need only listen to a few minutes of discussion on CNN or MSNBC, or to read the op-ed pages on almost any given day, to see that a similar attitude is widespread among Democrats. If you can’t imagine chants of “Lock him up!” at the Democratic convention in 2020, you haven’t been paying attention. Thus, the odds that the Democrats will elect their own Trump are very high. Of course, the one thing Trump fans and foes alike can agree on is that Trump is a unique political personality. But a Democratic can didate could substitute policy outlandishness for personal outlandishness quite easily. Many in the Democratic base could easily rally to someone promising to abolish ICE, deliver “Medicare for All,” repeal the Second Amendment... whatever. That would give Trump the ability to convince many other wise hostile voters to cast ballots against the Democrats rather than for the incumbent. He can’t win, but they can still lose. Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. So if Trump runs — which is probably a bigger “if” than many people think — the cards are stacked against him. JONAH GOLDBERG goldbergcolumn@ gmail.com ahc £tm ts Founded Jan. 26,1947 345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501 gainesvilletimes.com EDITORIAL BOARD General Manager Norman Baggs Editor in Chief Shannon Casas 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.
