Ramsey Crossroads, Ramsey Crossings, (whatever dumb name our prior great luninaries had selected), died on the vine. We are lucky. We could be stuck with two white elephants instead of only the one - the one on which spending continues, and continues, and continues, and continues yet again renewed even with faces on council largely changed and a new head honcho in administration.
Surely, it could have been worse. Twice as badddd. Think of the Elk River Cub store where Target as the second anchor closed shop and left a community void.
Strib online reports:
Communities confront 'ghostbox' buildings when big-box retailers leave --- By JAMES MacPHERSON, Associated Press, Last update: July 6, 2009 - 7:28 AM
BISMARCK, N.D. - Hundreds of anxious shoppers watched as city officials used power saws to cut 2-by-4s during Home Depot Inc.'s ribbon-cutting ceremony for its 102,700-square-foot building center in Bismarck. Less than three years later, the home improvement retailer shuttered the underperforming store, leaving a big orange empty eyesore on the outskirts of town.
The building, sitting derelict and silent on acres of asphalt, is now listed for sale at $10.5 million. But there's been little interest in the near windowless warehouse-like building that occupies a lot the size of a dozen football fields.
[...] As the recession takes its toll on big-box retailers, more communities across the country are having to confront not just the eyesore of giant empty stores, but also the loss of jobs and tax revenue that follow.
Many are trying to find creative uses for those near windowless monoliths. In Minnesota, one became a Spam Museum. In Texas, an indoor go-cart track. In Illinois, a church moved into an empty Wal-Mart. The new tenants, however, often generate less revenue for local governments.
It would have been twice as bad and then some if John Feges had his way, propaganda and all, with a map of Ramsey down at Nedegaard's Columbia Heights office with yellow outlining of "Town Center" as well as on the other side of Armstrong and the other side of Highway 10. Dreams, and then some.
Hubris and chutzpah, yes. Sagacity? You decide.
Closing with an image, album cover at the crossroads, surroundings looking familiar - a kind of, I saw that desolation down by the empty parking ramp, appearance:
That ramp-and-commuter-bus promotion, couldn't it use one more car, one more rider?
Ya betcha.
Perhaps name the overly-spiffy city hall the "James Norman Town Center Hub," and the ramp, the "Thomas Gamec Memorial Parking Situation." Things that will be costing and costing into Ramsey's future, to pay off and to maintain. Back to the opening image, without promotion nothing happens. But for naked promotion, Ramsey would have been free of Met. Council and land owner and Feges and Task Force promotional outcomes - free of that "seed" grant for the "Calthorpe Study," free of all that bad seed used on the community where Al and his family previously had dutifully planted corn season after season, green acres with maybe once a harvest, maybe never, a corner with a few stringy "Christmas Trees" as a crop.
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One thing is good. The current administration and council have eschewed hype, Barnum's been abandoned, and if a VA clinic locates there at RTC it would be a good thing even with adding nothing to the tax base with yet another government owned-operated ediface of which there are now many and with some still unsatisfied and wanting a "community center" to boot. However, I would hope the VA thing, if it happens, is to be sited on the now City-owned land portion, recouping something even if selling the site as a discount, rather than being akin to the questionable gross overpayment for land that county taxpayers were accorded when Jim Deal sold that morgue site right on the rail tracks to Erhart and company, for the nothing-added-to-tax-base morgue (where the stiffs will not rise up and shop and spend).
- photos from here (pricesely, here) and here -
______UPDATE______
As one friend has said, "If proliferating government buildings were a key to town commercial success, then Anoka would be hummingly prosperous." That is one hard argument for the P.T. Barnums of our own community to rebut. Even in light of that, the VA thing seems sound and we as a nation owe things to those who served at risk; but a swimming pool based community center - that would be little beyond continuing wasteful thinking and a rose-colored glasses view toward failed actualities as already experienced. With yet more of freakish P.T. BARNUMISM promotion at the helm (but at least with an opening referendum chance to say no), we could be the Wasilla of the lower 48. Even -- People could be asking in Ramsey, "Whose home or properties got benefit from which builder or materials suppliers?" Literally a Wasilla redux.
______FURTHER UPDATE_______
The Strib article, online p.2, noted:
Hormel Foods Corp., maker of the famous canned luncheon meat, opened the Spam Museum in Austin, Minn., in an old Kmart building that also had been a Sears store.
Sandy Forstner, executive director of the Austin Chamber of Commerce, said the Spam Museum, which opened in 2002, has been more valuable to the southeastern Minnesota community than the previous retailers, both in terms of property tax revenue and the number of visitors it draws to the area.
"The property has been significantly improved," Forstner said. "Hormel has spent millions of dollars redeveloping the property."
The 16,500-square-foot building also houses the headquarters for Hormel and offices for a hospital, he said.
Forstner said the Spam Museum is one of the biggest destinations in the state, and has brought tourism dollars to the town of about 23,000 people, near the Iowa border.
"It's always a problem for a community when a business leaves a building," he said. "The bigger the business, the bigger the facility and the bigger the problem."
I have a vision of moving Ramsey government back to a more modest building more centrally located as when on Nowthen [actually I would like to move them back into the historic building on Highway 47 next to the one bank, and make them downsize accordingly]; and then turning THE EDIFACE into a "Waste Management Dump Museum," and even there could be a legitimate "port authority" with a dock on the river and a modest little tourboat called the "S.S. Landfill," (if that name's not already taken and used). The possibilities are almost endless. The city could share office space with the museum, much as in Austin. Pipe the landfill offgas to Town Center and relocate the eternal flame. It might take a while to sell such a project but when peak oil hits at its worse and somebody thinks of making money by drilling into the landfill and pumping and refining fuel, it might be an idea timely at that time. Who is to say. P.T. Barnum? Met. Council? You, on a referendum vote?
Anything could happen, eh? No matter how unlikely, even as unlikely as a referendum vote in Ramsey. Like the one we could have had, before the expense of the City Hall thing being done for us. The Wasilla of the lower 48, plus a dump museum. Wow. As dynamic an idea as having a Towne Centre. And I disclose, I and my family do not stand to make one penny of profit off the idea, either way, done or shelved. On council or off.