County Board member Pat Vary, whose constituents include DeKalb south-siders both in- and outside the city, weighed in on the nature of the opposition of the Business Center project as well as the concept of balance in future industrial development. She also asks why we actively market logistics if we don’t want to follow Rochelle’s warehouse model for growth:

We must ask ourselves, how much farmland will we devote to warehouses? residences? office and research? What kind of developed community do we want to be 20 years from now? 40 years? It is definitely time for us to debate these questions more seriously and widely as a community before Mr. Keating or another developer comes back with more warehousing, attracted by the I-39Logistic Corridor’s marketing of a vast transportation network. Please check out http://www.i39logistics.com/ to see what is proposed for our whole area. Where is the Web site marketing to other types of businesses the wonderful communities of this area the quality of life, and the presence of university resources, that should attract businesses and their personnel providing higher pay scales than warehousing?

The rest of her LTTE is here.

The aldermen resisted the temptation to cancel tonight’s meeting & instead will further discuss warehousing and other growth issues.

A Chronicle editorial today says that they should first figure out what went wrong last week that prompted Rockefeller to cancel their monster project.

It’s not a bad idea, I guess, except what do you do? Call them up? They already said they quit us because of the costs associated with the infrastructure improvements. Why not take them at their word? We just aren’t ready for a project of this scope and they eventually realized it would be their dime spent on getting us there.
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We knew something was up at last week’s City Council meeting because one of Mr. Keating’s people got dissed by the Rockefeller lawyer. That’s right, Mr. Keating’s realtor told the Council that legally re-routing traffic around the downtown area–even though it’s a state route going through, therefore by law a truck route–would be no problem-o because Elmhurst has done it. Then the attorney got up and said that not every town had friends like Pate Phillips and [I can't remember the other Illinois big fish he named]. So we thought maybe Rockefeller was getting ready to dump Keating, but we did not guess that Rockefeller would totally pull out of the project as they did this past Monday afternoon.

The Chronicle has published three letters of comment about it in the past couple days. You can see them here, here and here.

I would be remiss if I didn’t express my appreciation about an edited version of the “Open Letter to Kris Povlsen” appearing yesterday in the Perspective section of the Star. That same letter plus three previous LTTEs critical of the Business Center project were ignored by the Daily Chronicle. After this frustrating and disillusioning shutout, you will not find a person more grateful for the opportunity to express her opinion in print once more. Thank you to Andy and the Northern Star.

Mr. Povlsen:

At last Monday’s City Council meeting, when the Council voted to approve tax abatements and fee waivers for the newest 3M project in town (“Project Oak”), you commented that some people misperceive such incentives as corporate welfare, whereas you would encourage us to think of these incentives as investments in our future.

Mr. Povlsen, such incentives might be either one. You know me as a person who has been opposing the new DeKalb Business Center warehouse project in a big way, yet you’ve not heard a peep from me or any of the Smart Growth-DeKalb group regarding Oak/3M. Why is that? It’s because we know the difference between a good deal and a bad one.
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One of the reasons I began blogging here is that the Chronicle suddenly began suppressing my letters-to-the-editor and I was looking for other outlets for my views. Any criticism of the DCEDC and its executive director, Roger Hopkins, seems to be off-limits. However, I cannot omit my opinions on his involvement in warehouse mania because I believe it’s a significant factor that should not be ignored.

I do not know whether this has anything to do with their publisher’s involvement with the DCEDC or not, but I think that’s a fair “guesstimate” since they had no problem printing at least a half-dozen of my letters on other topics from March-August. Also, I know of others whose letters expressing opposition to the Business Center project also have not been published. Bottom line is, I feel that they are abusing the public trust. And since I’ve kind of made a nuisance of myself over my beliefs, I’ll probably never see my opinions on newsprint again. Therefore I blog.

Letter to the Editor, 22 November 2005

Editor:

Many of the people who publicly support the Keating/Rockefeller/Business Center warehouse project have a financial interest in it. Most of those who are vocal in opposition would be living close to it. More of us who live in the city and who don’t have such high personal stakes should take a closer look and hop off the fence, one way or another.

That’s what I did, and have since joined the folks who have seen the plans and say this warehouse has the size of Godzilla and all the charm of Stalag 17.
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