From the story (here):

For years, the building at 147 Church St. has sat in severe disrepair. It’s the former Bush’s Garage, long designated by a sign on the paint-chipped and graffiti-targeted building. Most people saw the garage as an ideal candidate for a wrecking ball, but local brothers Todd and Kevin Smitka saw the potential home for a full-service motorcycle shop.

It’s people like the Smitkas who create problems for our city now: whereas most people want the wrecking ball, they just had to go transform the building by executing their vision for for what the place could be not for what it is.  That is not the way we do things here.

After all, aren’t most people here always right especially when it comes to razing and demolishing stuff? Good grief, we could have had a nice parking lot.

If you think that creating a super regional business park represents a groundbreaking achievement in collaboration between counties and of course, the riches that will flow from rubbing the genie lamp of  ”shared services”, I have a four letter word for you:

MOSA

Apparently as the videos presented here show a positive side of Amsterdam and hence, “manipulate” or “distort” or “mislead” by showing a positive side of the city, we once again witness nothing short of psychosis whereby the reality of a positive side of the city simply cannot be believed or accepted.  The existence of nice homes and neighborhoods cannot be “real”; the only thing that is “real” is the rundown, the blighted and the decrepit — that is what we need to show to be honest. Showing a positive is hence dishonest.

What utter madness is this?!

From today’s editorial (here):

How is this great news? Should we not follow AIDA’s example and eliminate expenses for writing grants; after all, grant writing is an expense and gosh golly, we can’t afford any marginal expense.  Where is the fiscal responsibility and fiscal oversight with folly such as spending tens of thousands of dollars on grant writing?

We need to cut, cut, cut.

Moreover, we need to reject this money not only for what it cost us but by accepting this state grant, are we not embracing socialism? We do not need the state or federal government meddling in our local affairs. We’ll pay for this ourselves with our own taxes. We need to cut, cut,  cut.

Terrible, dreadful news.

As I read the Sunday Recorder (here and here and here), I’m simply confounded by the arguments put forth on economic development for the city.  If cognitive dissonance and epistemic closure were weather patterns, we would head for the basements to hunker down from the ensuing storms, mindful of our suddenly piqued interest in the strength of our wooden beams and concrete walls  as we descend the stairway.

Of course, the conventional and legacy argument states that we cannot market the city unless the city is improved. Perhaps, New and Improved is more likely the unstated goal; nevertheless, the argument states in no uncertain terms that we are  not ready to go to market with what we have.  So the question that is never asked, and is the inherent and natural conflict in marketing and product development, is precisely when — give or take a decade– will we be ready to market? At what point from today, will we be ready to unleash Amsterdam New and Improved, Version 2.0?

I daresay it is never.

Because we will never be able to demolish enough of the city and build a suburban dystopia utopia in the city. Because we will never have the return of large industries reviving the silent factories and mills of yesteryear. Because there will always be some obstacle — real or imagined– which will forever get nearer but will elude our hopeful grasp. It’s an asymptotic process seeking asymptotic success,and  if such a business strategy existed it would entail a centuries long strategy to achieve its ultimate aim of failing to reach its end point. Clearly we have decades to go until the brilliance of this strategy reaches its apex.

If we look at the tactics driving this strategy, we find ourselves in a bit of a conundrum. While we cannot and should not market as a core strategic principle, we meanwhile pursue tactics such as a paid agreement with the county to perform what we deem impossible and undesirable — marketing our city. As marketing the city elicits the same reaction as plunging ourselves in raw sewage, we simply outsource the task so we do not sully ourselves in the process.

Meanwhile we forever look to the great expenses we must incur to keep this city from its predetermined oblivion. Imagine heading a company with a product so revolting, so awful, so ewww!, that your features ashen at the mere mention of even showing it to a customer. So you sit with your team huddled in a conference room nervously twitching lest anyone see your logo upon this dreaded product that could be unleashed upon the world. Regrettably for us, we  reside here, and like it or not, we are inextricably bound to this dismal product as part of its very fabric.  Why, most in the room would feel greater pride and higher moral ground in marketing cadmium-rich toys to toddlers and newborns than to make a salient pitch for someone to live in this city. I feel dirty even writing about it.

It’s more than clear and demonstrably true that the underlying strategies and tactics of the past decades failed spectacularly and epically to position this city in the marketplace of cities of today. Yet if clinging to tradition means not changing and not innovating then certain failure still reigns supreme to uncertain success. It is why fatalism and pessimism is a cause celebre’  here. Nothing elicits more scorn and contempt than a bright vision or a projection for a better tomorrow though innovation and purpose. That simply will not stand. How dare you even consider marketing the city?

If you brazenly err mentioning or endeavoring to pursue such a dark art as marketing, you must not really understand marketing or product development at all — you must be naive at best, delusional at worst.  To the experts who profess to understand such an arcane art as marketing and product development, it is a cut and dry matter: you only market when your product is ready. In their eyes, the product — in this case, the city– should be viewed exactly the same as any  product sitting on the shelf at Walmart. So people view marketing  our city with the same mindset as they would market laundry detergenet. But our local experts know marketing resolves to a simple matter — price. We must be the lowest priced; price reigns supreme and as cities embody the core attributes of any commodity, then low price assures success. Indeed we will out-Walmart Walmart as the price king against our fellow communities competitors.  What folly to compete on anything but price in the marketplace! How laughable we are told that you compete on anything but price. How laughable to consider cities as diametrically opposed to commodity economics.

Indeed the markets do laugh — unfortunately they laugh at us, not with us. Markets laugh at viewing a product and marketing strategy as strictly based upon price. Markets laugh at competing on price when your cost structure assures your price to be your lowest form of competitive advantage . Markets laugh at viewing selling a community with the same principle as selling laundry detergent and viewing a community as a commodity.

To the self-professed experts on products and marketing, the underlying features of the product matter little if at all. This why what I naively consider the competitive advantage and market differentiators of our city– historic and significant architecture, unique neighborhoods, sidewalks, front porches — matter the least if at all unless, as I tend to say, they are at the end of a wrecking ball. Even our historic City Hall building is now too much of a burden to shoulder so the figurative now becomes literal as City Hall may now be housed in our local mall. What should be considered the surreal is instead quite real in our fair city. But if the move were to occur it would be the manifestation of our product strategy — turn the authentic urban fabric of our city into a faux suburbia. Why not, historic architecture remains an impediment, a bug if you will, in our product. If you can’t aluminum side it and you can’t tear it down, just move into the ultimate manifestation of suburbia — our local mall– and be done with it.

Of all the features of our city and amongst the pablum of marketing and products, the feature no one dare discuss is our school system. As we are fond of our acronyms for our public entities to market for us — AIDA, URA, CED, MCCC, WTF, et al — why do we not add GASD to the mix? After all, if our city is a product, is not the school system one of the features of said product? Well, according to our local experts, not really. You might find this counter-intuitive to understand so let me explain the underlying principle.

As the GASD, the city and the county operate under their own charter and their own governance, each is its own entity and operates as such. In product terms, you are getting a package deal — you can’t buy any one without buying the other. As a customer, it seems rational to view the product experience and product quality as the aggregate set of features across all products including the GASD. But wait, you’re not supposed to do that. You must instead view the city product distinctly as if they were wholly distinct and separate. It’s like buying a car and when you ask about the engine, the sales and marketing literature refer you to another company. When you then question how you can evaluate the product functionality of the whole car, you are derided for your foolishness in not understanding how they market and develop products.  You clearly don’t get business.

If you doubt this assertion, it’s easy enough to test drive: ask an elected leader on the role of the school district vis-a-vis economic development and you will see what I mean. It’s amusing then to see claims of marketing and product prowess from the very players acting as stewards of our school district in light of our test scores and our pursuit of the now discredited magnet school approach.

If we truly want to think of products and marketing, it’s important to step back and ask a simple question, 101 at its finest — why do we market and why do we develop products? Simple question, really, why?

[insert long pause here for readers to ponder]

The only reason you market and develop products is to sell them to a customer.  Period. If you do not sell, you have no need for marketing or products or strategy or anything at all. You should just close up shop and liquidate.

And that is exactly the product we are going to market with Amsterdam Version 2.0 to be released in 2057.

Brilliant.

We may quibble about who ultimately is to blame for our local woes — those people, certain people — but I think by far, the largest blame falls clearly on the shoulders of our mothers, aunts, sisters and the feminine ilk who permeate this city. Lest we celebrate this day with no reflection upon our current sad state of affairs, let’s keep in mind Grover Cleveland’s sage proclamation nearly a century ago:

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence.

Today women not only vote but meddle in the affairs once the sole province of men such as economics and politics and upset the natural order of things with prominent positions in our society. Why it’s nothing short of a takeover of our local culture and an unfolding  harbinger of decline nearly a century in the making.

We have everything to fear especially fear itself.

Typically capital projects involve investment in infrastructure or purchases of major equipment. Regardless  capital projects  typically have a time span of 10 years, maybe 5 years. It’s a bit curious to see demolition fall under the “Capital Project and Equipment Five Year Plan” cited here.

In my view, demolition should not be bonded nor should it be considered a capital project. Demolition should be an operating expense incurred the year of demolition and budgeted as such. Here’s why it matters.

First, demolition imposes hard costs on tax payers regardless of how much shared services rhetoric you wrap around the topic. If the story above makes one thing perfectly clear, it  is that demolition requires hard dollars; it’s not a free ride. Or put another way: each and every property demolished raises taxes. Or yet another way: if you champion demolition, you are championing higher taxes.

Second, by bonding the demolition expense, the cost gets sprinkled over many years and hence the true cost appears much smaller as a result. This creates incentives to increase demolition as the bonding of the cost makes the impact more palatable on a year-by-year basis. As a rough cut, spending $100K in demolition per year over 5 years is much more palatable than $500K in one year. Hence the incentive to understate the true cost and as a result, pursue more demolition — a disastrous incentive.

Third, the time line of demolition is way out of sync with the bond issue which is not desirable. I may bond the demolition of the house over 10 years even if I demolish the house today but I still end up paying for that over the next 10 years.

Fourth, we should learn our lesson on demolition from past experience when demolition was ‘free’ via urban renewal grants and monies. I think demolition is anything but free and keeping it as an expense would harshly remind us of that fact each and every time. In turn, this would enable alternate ideas and approaches to demolition with financial incentives that would yield better returns to tax payers if we could minimize or eliminate demolition.

Now that would be a capital idea.

I’m not following why we need to change our downtown traffic patterns (here). I think it’s an untapped gold mine.

Clearly millions of people enjoyed the video game Frogger in its heyday where players needed to get their frog across a busy highway without getting splattered. And clearly reality TV maintains its high popularity and viewership. So let’s combine the hair raising challenge of Frogger with the immediacy of reality TV for a new HBO series,  ’Frogger 12010′.  In Frogger 12010, we could watch the ensuing hilarity and horror as locals and visitors on foot and in car try to navigate the downtown arterial with their sanity and body intact.

I think HBO makes sense given the ensuing profanity as each contestant skips across the myriad of lanes and turns.

I think the only sticking point in my pitch is why would the frog want to get to the other side. In the original Frogger, you get points; in Frogger 12010, you get to re-experience loss of a vibrant downtown and city. Not sure that sells to the TV audience.

Looks like my pitch needs some work.

I’m not sure what is going on as I’ve been out-of-town for a few days but things seem profoundly different upon my return.

First, a lengthy, nicely done piece in the Recorder on the GASD’s magnet school program and magnet school academic performance that points to the failure of the program to deliver the expected academic outcomes. My, oh, my. Who-da-thunk that!

Second, the Recorder editors weigh in with a strong critique of the reactions to the WPHO and point to the disconnect between our slogan and reality. Am I really sharing the same side of an issue with the Recorder editors? Weird…

Third, Charlie Kraebel weighs in with a blistering piece on the WPHO as well and dares to shed some sunlight on local radio’s role in the ‘debate’. I may have differences with Charlie, but here, I agree with him as well. What is going on?

That said, I’m not sure the transformation is quite complete as remnants of non-Bizarro Amsterdam still remain: one of the arguments against selling to the WPHO is now that these properties should have been demolished with no chance for someone to consider restoring the properties. If you have any questions on the folly and fallacy of the demolition strategy, look no further than that as your proof. They would rather spend money on demolition, forgo the proceeds of the sale as negligible as they are, spend money to landfill it and also forgo the potential property tax of a restored property than maybe see something brought back. But then, we would not be demolishing and landfilling buildings and hence sharing services and that would be quite sad, perhaps even sacrilegious.

Speaking of negligible, I see the $2500 in expense for the rose garden to be a great source of concern while forgoing the possibility of many multiples of that from the WPHO to be perfectly fine.  Weird.

Maybe I’ve got it wrong: maybe it’s been Bizarro World here for many decades and glimmers of a regular and lucid world broke through in the past few days.

It’s all so bizarre.

“People are scared,” she said. “It’s like they’re coming in and taking over.”

“Why are these people moving here?” asked Hatzenbuhler. “It’s just more than people can handle.”

I find this utterly contemptible and disturbing demagoguery.  Appalling.

I should not be surprised the least at this, but you always think maybe folks will turn around or embrace some change here. Clearly not.

I never liked “Small City, Big Heart” — I think I see why.”Small City, Black Heart”?

Let’s see if any of our esteemed community leaders will denounce this rhetoric.  I suspect not.

PS I thought the proper phase was “those people” not “these people”. I am sooo confused!