At the DFL Senate District 48 Convention one delegate asked me about why the name, "Developers are Crabgrass."
First, it is true if you view developers as I do, and crabgrass as a nuisance.
At any rate, here is a republication from the very first item I posted:
Why insult crabgrass?
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Well, so "Developers are Crabgrass." What's that mean to you? To me: Crabgrass will survive almost anything and prosper, unless you use chemical poisons and that could harm God's useful creatures. So far the analogy holds.
However, take a profit away, and that will not deter crabgrass one bit. But find a developer where there's no profit to be taken, and you've found a truly rare variant. Most likely an ex-developer.
A developer will take pride in finding raw land, getting a better view of the sky by removing every tree possible, and then harming that good view by putting up something using lumber differently than a tree does, and looking ugly. You doubt that? Go look at the Ramsey Town Celter housing, and come back and tell me without breaking a grin, it is not ugly.
It is ugly and it is brought to you by eager developers. Not one but a hierarchy of people with bad ideas and the will to reduce them all to unappealing housing. Developers subpurchasing from other developers, all ostensibly under the control of a city council, or vice versa. Go look at what's on the ground and tell me which way you see the control flowing. Either way, Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum in the driver's seat, good judgment is like a lost orphan after the circus has been to town. We know where it is absent, where it likely disappeared to, and likely motives for the disappearnace.
I could say city councilmembers are crabgrass. But why insult crabgrass? Starting that whole story could end up in a defamation lawsuit, sooner than you could say SLAPP you and your mama, and almost as fast as you could say "conflict of interest." Or "rampant conflict of interest." Or "mind-boggling bodacious conflict of interest."
With Lora Pabst of Strib reporting of Tom Gump, a developer, possibly having an interest in the moribund Ramsey Town Center, and with it being all fools' day, two unrelated and totally coincidental things, bone-picking and foolery, I largely stand by what I first started this blog with.
Tom Gump - who is that guy?
What is his track record?
What are his ties to Ramsey?
______________UPDATE_______________
Aside from fools -- Here is an online photograph, from an online article [p.1, contd. p.10] about one development Gump is touting apparently along with other lobbyists and/or consultants and/or birds of a feather. It looks like another Field of Dreams to me. Plumb it, and they shall come. Just like Ramsey Town Center. It could be a RTC clone, or viewed as a competitive development, seeking those same dense housing buyers that the Town Centre promotion seeks.
I wonder whether the Kuraks have any ties to that Brockton Interchange thing. Probably not.