Don’t miss Loren Steffy’s column today:
Just hours after the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday, Freeport officials began efforts to seize waterfront property from two seafood companies as part of an $8 million marina development, according to a report by Chronicle correspondent Thayer Evans.
The action was accompanied by the usual economic development blather. The marina will lure $60 million worth of hotels, restaurants and shops, create hundreds of jobs and revitalize downtown.
“It’s all dependent on the marina,” Lee Cameron, the city’s economic development director, told the Chronicle. “Without the marina, (the hotels) aren’t interested. With the marina, (the hotels) think it’s a home run.”
Therein lies the flawed logic that too often creeps into economic development programs: Success is assumed. Build the marina and the hotels will be a “home run.”
It ignores questions developers don’t ask, but cities should. What if they strike out? What if, even with a marina, no one stays at the hotels? How long will the hotels stay in business if occupancy rates trail their forecasts?
Is a shuttered hotel development preferable to a waterfront of small, if aesthetically unappealing, businesses?
