From a city of Greensboro public information request in which I asked how much did the City of Greensboro spend for the rehabilitation of the unit of the Bessemer Shopping Center occupied by the Family Dollar Store.
"Per your public information request on how much did the rehabilitation of the Family Dollar space in the strip mall cost; Family Dollar was required to invest 100K in order to extend their lease. They provided their construction budget as verification but the City did not do a cost certification. The City spent approximating 24K to clean up, repair and repaint the façade."
So it only cost the City of Greensboro $24,000 to fix up the facade for the Family Dollar Store but with private developers fixing the facade for the remainder of the shopping center the cost is said to run somewhere close to $3 Million. Folks, this is a tiny shopping center. Yeah, I know there's talk of some things being added but why add anything as long as there are empty shops remaining? And right now, with the exception of one, all the shops are empty.
You see, for the last 14 years the Family Dollar was the only store in the Bessemer Shopping Center that had been bought in a corporate bailout a few years before from wealthy real estate developer, Katherine Stern Weaver of the Weaver Foundation, known for its philanthropy in support of a wealthy art collection while poor children just 5 miles away in East Greensboro do without. That's right, while Katherine Stern Weaver gets tax breaks for her art collection the City of Greensboro saves her business from letting one tiny strip mall go back to the bank.
Ever wondered about the definition of philanthropy. It means "love of humanity" and yet we use it to describe anyone who gets a tax break or forms a non profit. I'm a poet, novelist, writer of short stories and songs. I love art but in the scheme of things adding to the tax burdens of poor families to save your precious art collections because your business went south hardly seems like philanthropy. It seems like greed.
Then there is the question of where the money came from to buy the Bessemer Shopping Center in the first place. Most readers will be surprised to read that Mac Sims of the East Market Street Development Corporation-- yet another Greensboro "non profit" that only recently popped up on my RADAR-- diverted roughly half a million Dollars from a $5 Million Dollar East Greensboro economic development bond previously approved by Greensboro voters whom I'm sure were not voting to bail out wealthy real estate developers with private art collections worth hundreds of $Millions.
Now how does giving money to a wealthy developer aid in the economic development of East Greensboro? Did she will us her art collection so we could sell it off and invest that money in our community? I think everyone reading knows the answer. I think Mac Sims, EMSDC and the Greensboro City Council enguaged in a good old fashioned case of misappropriation of funds.
And just who sits on the Board of Directors of the East Market Street Development Corporation? Why none other than Uncle Milton Kern and a few more you just might know.
So for those of you who blame all of East Greensboro's problems on those of us who live in East Greensboro: Now you know who the real shop lifters have been all along. The same ones who have had their fingers in every other pie in town.
As I wrote in parts 1-7, other elite developers now want the shopping center but only after the community around the shopping center took it on our own to try and bring it back to life. And only after it looked as if we might become successful. Talk about a slap in the face. We go from being ripped off by a wealthy art collector/real estate developer to trying to be ripped off by a slumlord developer George Carr and our own 20 year district county commissioner and former North Carolina NAACP President turned swindler, Skip Alston.
And did I mention that Mr Alston's partners were foreign investors? Yes, several times, I'm sure.
I also asked the city to tell me who to contact if myself or someone else might be interested in renting the empty shops. You see, until now the City of Greensboro has made no effort to rent any of the empty spaces. No where at the Bessemer Shopping Center can you find contact information or even who owns the property. It's as if the City of Greensboro wanted the property to remain vacant forever or at least long enough to have the excuse that the City could no longer afford to lose money on the property and would be better off the give it away to a wealthy developer.
My guess is the second is closer to the truth.
Continue reading What The Media And The City Aren't Telling You About The Renaissance Community Co-op Part 9
