The Gary Department of Anti-Commerce: AKA: How to kill creativity in a long, unnecessary series of obstructive steps The inaptly named and newly minted Department Anti-Commerce was the brainchild of the New Day administration. Karen Freeman-Wilson repeatedly boasted about how this newfangled department would be a one-stop shop (more like a one-shop dead stop) and make the process of establishing a business in Gary seamless. She declared in true political fashion: “Gary is open for business!” To listen to her, one might have supposed that businesses would be flocking to the city. That would have been a wrong supposition. None of the recent administrations in Gary have been what one would call “business-friendly”. But none have been so openly and overtly hostile towards businesses than this one: Karen Freeman-Wilson’s New Day administration. With her fancy-schmancy staff of overpaid, yet utterly, totally, abjectly incompetent “experts”, they have taken obstruction and hostility toward businesses to a whole new level; probably only rivaled by the Hatcher administration at the height of the Civil Rights era. The process of destroying the city of Gary began in earnest back then, but it appears that this new mayor plans to take the baton and seems bent on finishing it off. Her Team Gary as she likes to refer to them, haven’t been at things very long yet, but they have still managed to do significant damage. They haven’t managed to attract any new businesses that hadn’t already had plans in the pipeline to locate here anyway. Now on the other hand, there are several businesses that have attempted to locate to this city, but when they met up with her team, they ran into a buzz saw. Here are a couple of examples: Case in point #1: Have you ever heard of the 18th St. Brewery? Well if this administration continues to have its way, you may hear of it, but you’ll never be able to draw a pint there! So a guy in Chicago who works at a trendy brew pub in Chicago moves back to Gary and decides he wants to open a nice place in his home town. He finds a location in Miller to ply his trade. He signs a lease and is ready to hit the ground running. Life is good, right? Well it may have been were it not for the Department of Commerce and the rest of the supposedly business-friendly Team Gary and the new Day administration. Rather than helping this guy navigate his way through the perfunctory red tape, the “Team” got a few fresh rolls of red tape off the shelf and wrapped him up with it! I don’t know how much more of an assault from the city this guy will be able to sustain before he packs it up and decides to locate his business somewhere else. Without any doubt whatever, the seamless process that this mayor heralded has already added several months to the process of opening his brew pub in Gary. It may have killed it entirely. It has certainly added many unnecessary costs to his plans. And he hasn’t even started the business yet! I doubt we’ll have a brew pub open for business in Miller for quite some time. Case in point #2: There is some property in Gary located near the intersection of Route 51 and Route 20. There is a Ponderosa Steakhouse in the front. There is a Chinese restaurant and several other businesses located at this site. There is also a pristine 20-acre sand dune and swale property in this area. So what is wrong with this so far? Her team has decided that this is a great place for an industrial park. The proposed industrial park would include the sand dune property, and all of the other properties to the west of the dune. It would require the relocation of all the existing businesses to make way for the new proposed industrial park—the one proposed by an unnamed developer. Not so bad so far you say? Well unbeknownst to the dreamers within the New Day administration, a trucking company comes along and purchases a large property smack dab in the middle of the site upon which the industrial park is proposed to sit. But they don’t just buy the property, they immediately begin to improve the property. They install a wrought-iron fence around the perimeter, and they begin to convert the useless old K-Mart building into a building that will be suitable for the needs of their company—which includes warehouse space. So once Eric Reaves, caught wind of this he went berserk. How dare a real business come to the city and dash his plans for a fake business! So again, rather than the City welcome this new, yet unexpected business to the city, they greeted them in their own special, loving way: they plastered “Stop Work” notices on the building. After all, with a real business at this location, the 60-acre proposed industrial park is now dead. Thank God! I guess this means that the sand dune gets to live another day instead of becoming just another sand mine; later to be used as a dump like the property directly across the street from it. So this is apparently what we should continue to expect from this New Day, business-friendly administration: more hostility and obstruction towards the business community. I just don’t want anybody to be surprised that after 4 years of the Karen Freeman-Wilson administration and her Team Gary, comprised of individuals without any business experience whatsoever, that the economy of the city will have further deteriorated; and that the tax base of the city will have eroded even further; and that there still won’t be any significant number of new jobs for Gary residents. Just don’t be surprised, because this IS the reality of Gary, Indiana under her direction! This mayor and her staff did not get hired for their vision. They didn’t get elected to dream, and to thrust their dreams upon us. They got hired to administrate and to perform the mundane and often tedious tasks that every city needs done to be able to function properly. This is all we need you to do. We don’t want your vision. We don’t need your dreams. We just want you to do your jobs, the ones that you are not currently doing to even a minimally acceptable degree. So instead of dreaming, try just working. Try just performing. Try just doing the things it takes to make a city function properly. And quit dreaming—because your dreams create nightmares for everyone else in the city! Dream on your own time…on your own dime…not ours!
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 15:52:40 +0000
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