[In September 2017, residents of Independence were requested by The Independent to submit questions for this edition. One resident who raised specific economic issues was asked to write an editorial. It is below.]
Guest Editorial
by Ron Smith
Developing a destination hotel in Independence is great step in the right direction to inject some stability into the local economy. Salem doesn’t have one. Polk County has a major hotel which is located on reservation land. Dallas and Monmouth have small motels. High-quality lodging does not exist within a 25-mile radius. Our community could easily serve travelers and business people alike.
Primarily because of the few egos involved in the decision-making process related to the Indy Landing gamble, a great idea has become a potential disaster in the making and a desperate attempt to accomplish anything to justify an already staggering taxpayer investment. Let’s start out with location, location, location. Building any structure on a river bank, well below the high-water mark of the flood plain, on the top of a reclaimed landfill, in a well-documented major earthquake zone is not entirely impossible but economically unreasonable.
Since 2009 sixty-one businesses have closed their doors on the three-square blocks of downtown. Seventeen of those were restaurants.
This is a small town. It has a state highway running through the middle of it. Traffic barely slows down for a stop sign; much less to look for a convenient place to park and patronize what random shop may be open at the time. There are thousands of square feet of empty rental space. It doesn’t make sense to create any additional retail square footage when property managers cannot sustain what is already available. This town is a classic bedroom community. Most locals choose to eat, shop and socialize at locations that are more convenient to where they work. An on-premises restaurant and bar at a hotel lacks successful business logic. Any additional redundancy will diminish necessary local support for this project and force a few more existing establishments into the tidal churn of Independence.
Relying on the wine industry to provide enough tourism to support a local hotel is an ill-advised idea involving an already over-saturated niche. Every local vineyard attempts to attract potential customers to visit their own tasting rooms. Why would any connoisseur travel and spend the night here? McMinnville is running continuous commercials on national satellite channels to visit their existing wine tourism network and they already have hotels. Dundee Oregon has 24 tasting outlets. Sober up or wake up to this potential Achilles heel. Yamhill county beat Polk out of the starting gate on this opportunity a long time ago.
Here is just an estimation of how much taxpayer money has been spent in making the riverbank resemble an economic opportunity. The City paid at around $800K for the gravel pit. Then the tab for filling all the holes and pushing the contaminated soil to the four corners of the property was another $500K. $50K was spent for an out sourced entity to market the development without any guarantee that if they couldn’t find a taker, the taxpayers would get their money back.
So how many registered voters residing in the city limits think it’s a wise idea to give up two million dollars’ worth of system development fees as bait to lure outside stakeholders into coming here and siphoning off the revenue potential of this project? These development fees cover the existing costs to the local taxpayers relative to the money invested in making the riverbank resemble an economic gamble. The argument of “We’ll make it up in hotel taxes,” doesn’t justify the expense.
City hall has painted itself into a corner with this landing gamble. It has made numerous mistakes and poor business decisions in the past, which continue to cost the taxpayers; there is no margin left for trial and error.
A hotel is a good idea that has not reached a destination but merely a reference point. The minds that created Independence’s problems may not be the ones capable of creating the best solutions. The lid is cracked on a Pandora’s Box of potential consequences which can all be avoided or exploited. 2018 is the year everyone should be paying very close attention to which direction this town is heading.
Guest Editorial
by Ron Smith
Developing a destination hotel in Independence is great step in the right direction to inject some stability into the local economy. Salem doesn’t have one. Polk County has a major hotel which is located on reservation land. Dallas and Monmouth have small motels. High-quality lodging does not exist within a 25-mile radius. Our community could easily serve travelers and business people alike.
Primarily because of the few egos involved in the decision-making process related to the Indy Landing gamble, a great idea has become a potential disaster in the making and a desperate attempt to accomplish anything to justify an already staggering taxpayer investment. Let’s start out with location, location, location. Building any structure on a river bank, well below the high-water mark of the flood plain, on the top of a reclaimed landfill, in a well-documented major earthquake zone is not entirely impossible but economically unreasonable.
Since 2009 sixty-one businesses have closed their doors on the three-square blocks of downtown. Seventeen of those were restaurants.
This is a small town. It has a state highway running through the middle of it. Traffic barely slows down for a stop sign; much less to look for a convenient place to park and patronize what random shop may be open at the time. There are thousands of square feet of empty rental space. It doesn’t make sense to create any additional retail square footage when property managers cannot sustain what is already available. This town is a classic bedroom community. Most locals choose to eat, shop and socialize at locations that are more convenient to where they work. An on-premises restaurant and bar at a hotel lacks successful business logic. Any additional redundancy will diminish necessary local support for this project and force a few more existing establishments into the tidal churn of Independence.
Relying on the wine industry to provide enough tourism to support a local hotel is an ill-advised idea involving an already over-saturated niche. Every local vineyard attempts to attract potential customers to visit their own tasting rooms. Why would any connoisseur travel and spend the night here? McMinnville is running continuous commercials on national satellite channels to visit their existing wine tourism network and they already have hotels. Dundee Oregon has 24 tasting outlets. Sober up or wake up to this potential Achilles heel. Yamhill county beat Polk out of the starting gate on this opportunity a long time ago.
Here is just an estimation of how much taxpayer money has been spent in making the riverbank resemble an economic opportunity. The City paid at around $800K for the gravel pit. Then the tab for filling all the holes and pushing the contaminated soil to the four corners of the property was another $500K. $50K was spent for an out sourced entity to market the development without any guarantee that if they couldn’t find a taker, the taxpayers would get their money back.
So how many registered voters residing in the city limits think it’s a wise idea to give up two million dollars’ worth of system development fees as bait to lure outside stakeholders into coming here and siphoning off the revenue potential of this project? These development fees cover the existing costs to the local taxpayers relative to the money invested in making the riverbank resemble an economic gamble. The argument of “We’ll make it up in hotel taxes,” doesn’t justify the expense.
City hall has painted itself into a corner with this landing gamble. It has made numerous mistakes and poor business decisions in the past, which continue to cost the taxpayers; there is no margin left for trial and error.
A hotel is a good idea that has not reached a destination but merely a reference point. The minds that created Independence’s problems may not be the ones capable of creating the best solutions. The lid is cracked on a Pandora’s Box of potential consequences which can all be avoided or exploited. 2018 is the year everyone should be paying very close attention to which direction this town is heading.
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