This editorial in today's Post-Gazette is almost unbelievable. It is aimed at telling us all what a good idea it is for the city to pitch in $18 million to support PNC's latest skyscraper boondoggle. I suppose someone might be able to make an intelligent argument in support of the subsidy, but this ain't it. Check this out:
It's hard to imagine a project more suited to such help from future taxes it will generate. That the proposed site is "blighted" is depressingly obvious. It also will be tough to develop without public help, and Pittsburgh is fortunate to have PNC investing $122 million of its own money in the package.
Well, we've been trying these top-down schemes since the 1940s. If the area is still blighted, maybe it's time to think of a different strategy. Moreover, the Post-Gazette appears to support a bevy of other projects in the Forbes-Fifth corridor. If those projects are going to work, why will the PNC site be "tough to develop without public help"? The definition of success in those other projects is to attract private investment, right? Why not wait to see if it happens? Or why not tell PNC to go ahead with their project but cut back on some of the bells and whistles--you know, tell them to build what they can actually afford.
The paper goes on to slam the use of TIF for a shopping center in Ohio Township:
The same argument was made for Mount Nebo Pointe, the TIF-assisted plaza that is bringing Target, Sam's Club and the already-open Sportsmen's Warehouse to Ohio Township. But that site is not far from similar shopping, including some of the same merchants -- which will compete for the same North Hills shoppers.
Well, the proposed PNC skyscraper is not far from vacant office space downtown. And the condos proposed will not be far from ones slated for the Lazarus building, etc. And the proposed shops will not be far from... oh, to hell with it.
I think the Post-Gazette can be a pretty good newspaper. But its incessant cheerleading in this regard is completely out of control. I mean, does the presence of a few retail shops, many of which already operate elsewhere in the region--or a law firm moving from one city location to another--really count as "revitalization"?
I say no. But I'm not all that smart. Perhaps the editorialists at the P-G will be more convinced by the most underrated economist of the past few hundred years. A Frenchman, no less:
There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
Read the whole thing. At least through "The Broken Window Theory." Please P-G editorialists.
Please.
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