Trying to be Wise

Last night I met with the owners of the doc-in-a-box down the street; VP also attended. They currently have a 20,000 sf building on one lot and own 2 adjacent lots. Their vision is for a total of 55,000 sf medical park focusing on musculoskeletal medicine. A hospital in Charlotte has just filed a proposal with the State to locate a same-day-surgery facility in this Smalltown, in a bldg on this campus, leased from the doc-in-a-box ppl.

Our neighborhood has a long and bitter history with this business. Some of the primaries at the business hate our neighborhood. Some of our neighbors hate the business.

I see my accountability as protecting the fringes of the neighborhood from encroachment; and preserving the R8 (single family residential) zoning that was won by the blood, sweat and tears of our neighbors who founded our neighborhood association almost 20 yrs ago. Without that zoning overlay, there's no way we'd be on the National Register today; no way our property values would be where they are today; no way we would've even found the neighborhood an attractive place to buy a house. I have to preserve that overlay to preserve the life of the neighborhood.

One of the three parcels owned by the d-i-a-box folks is currently R8. It used to be a farmhouse built in 1900. The diab folks bought it, did not maintain it, and when it fell into ruin, demolished it on Christmas Day in 2004. Now they want to rezone it to LOI, which is the zoning their other 2 properties have.

The hospital in Charlotte who applied for the bid to develop the same-day-surgery are in competition with the local hospital. The folks at the local hospital say, "we serve indigents and no-pays and the profit from the same-day-surgery will supplant the large writeoffs we have to make for them..." They say, "if we get the bid, the money goes back into the local community; if the other hosp gets it, it does not."

All this is true.

The doc-in-a-box folks say, "We pay property taxes. The local hosp does not." They say, "Forty-seven percent of the ppl in Smalltown, USA go out of town for their surgery. They do not trust the local hosp. We are looking to capture some of those folks at this facility run by the out of town hosp."

All this is true.

The State determines who wins the bid. We have the opportunity in 2 weeks to appear at a State hearing and voice our opinions. We have the opportunity to influence the State decision. To what degree our appearance matters, I am not sure. I am sure that if we don't go, we don't influence it at all.

I was talking with a gf the other day about our political aspirations. I confessed to her that one of my biggest flaws is my open-mindedness. Today I am really wrestling with that.

As I wrote above, I do know that my commitments are to protect the neighborhood from commercialism, and to preserve the R8 zoning, and I will do so. Meanwhile, I'm aware that our neighborhood may not be totally fair to the guys down the street.