Fancy Retail in South Dallas: We Built It, and They Didn't Come

[TexasTowelie]

You guys are killing me. I'm a four-hyphen guy, a commie-pinko hippie-liberal nanny-state bleeding-heart libtard. I thought Dallas was supposed to be ultra-conservative. You're supposed to have at least one hyphen. But you keep putting me on the wrong side of the hyphen.

Today The Dallas Morning News has a serious editorial -- as opposed to a joke -- in which it bemoans the fact that the erection of a city-subsidized shopping center to house rich and fancy shops in a district of bleak soul-biting poverty two years ago in South Dallas has failed to cause that area to become rich and fancy. In fact it has just failed -- failed, failed, failed.

What the ...? No. You guys know better than this. You have to know better than this. But you keep doing it. Not just in poor South Dallas. You did it a few years ago in downtown with a government-owned fancy furniture store and a fancy grocery store. The fancy furniture store and the fancy grocery store, subsidized at fancy government cost, also failed to cause fancy people to emerge from nearby sidewalks like potted palms.

-snip-

To shop, you have to have money. You can't shop without money. People sell things for money. You bring the money into the shop. You give the shop the money. They give you the umbrella. They don't give you the umbrella, and then money falls out of it, and then you give them back some of the money. If it started working like that, the shop people would shutter their shop immediately, take all their umbrellas home and shake the hell out of them.

More at http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/06/fancy_retail_in_south_dallas_w.php#more .

[mbperrin]

1. Midland, I'm afraid, is about to get a dose of this with their proposed

billion (yep, with a b) dollar tower downtown with luxury condos and shopping.

It will be interesting, in any case.

[TexasTowelie]

2. Isn't Midland supposed to become a tourist Mecca when they turn the Bush home into a museum

and after the construction of the 53-story tower is completed?

Oops, I mentioned that Muslim word in with a post about Midland--shame on me.

Since Gov. Perry signed the "Merry Christmas" bill and because I don't want to forget about wishing you seasons greetings:
Ramadan Mubarac to you and the students in America's parched-land. Yes, I know that I spelled Chanukah wrong.

[mbperrin]

3. Yes, shame on you!

For being too funny at someone else's expense!

hey, wait, that's the basis of ALL comedy!

And all that seasonality right back atcha!