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Well really government nannies like Pam Goronkin and the other members of the Tempe City Council may think that they are smarter and brighter then us serfs and that they know how to run our lives better then we do. But when it comes to Mill Avenue in Tempe about the only thing Tempe City Government has done on Mill is to drive the small businesses out of Mill Avenue with high taxes and government regulations, replacing them with bigger businesses that can give the City of Tempe more revenue.
So it ain’t about making Mill Avenue a better place, its all about shaking down the business on Mill Avenue for more revenue in the form of sales taxes. The Tempe government nannies are nothing but thieves. But sadly this form of thievery is legal!
Downtown Tempe leader vows to keep Mill unique Mill Avenue is not Scottsdale Fashion Square, Paradise Valley Mall or Chandler Fashion Center. And Pam Goronkin says she intends to keep it that way. Goronkin, a former Tempe City Council member who lives in south Tempe, this fall took over as director of the Downtown Tempe Community, an association of central city property owners and merchants that promotes downtown Tempe. This week she spoke publicly for the first time about where she hopes DTC is going over the next few years. Goronkin said keeping Mill Avenue's "unique, wonderful sense of place," in the face of massive downtown development and the opening this year of the Tempe Marketplace shopping center, is a top priority. "On Mill, we have a sense of place, of history, we're real," Goronkin said. "Malls are not bad places. I shop at Scottsdale Fashion Square. "But they are designed, contrived places. Mill Avenue is a public place, the town square, a gathering place and you know you're somewhere when you're here. We absolutely have to preserve that." Preserving Mill's uniqueness is a challenge, Goronkin said. "We have significant owners here from out of state who we want to help understand the uniqueness of Mill Avenue," Goronkin said. She said that major investors on Mill include Canada-based Avenue Communities, as well as businesses based in Australia, Florida and Las Vegas, not to mention Phoenix-based companies. Goronkin said that despite some key downtown businesses leaving Mill Avenue in the past decade - many lamented Changing Hands Bookstore's departure - Mill is still home to "a very significant number of smaller businesses." "We don't want to lose the little businesses. We need to provide places for them," Goronkin said. And as big players such as Arizona State University and the city, as well as various corporations, eat up square footage on Mill, finding places for small businesses is getting tougher. "You find space for those small businesses by developing a decision-making model for development in the downtown that would include off-Mill retail," Goronkin said. "You open up the street grid more and have opportunities for side street retail. Even using alleys is a way to retain small, unique and quirky businesses of all kinds." Goronkin said that beginning next week, the DTC will begin conducting a "strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats" (SWOT) study. "That will be an analysis not only of Mill Avenue but of our regional competitors," Goronkin said. "Then the DTC board's strategic planning team will look at the SWOT analysis and make determinations about next steps, what we must do in the next three to five years to ensure that Mill Avenue fulfills its potential." |