Rumblings

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Arcade Barber Shop 1981 ... now demolished


What a gloriously frigid day, and tomorrow promises to be more than glorious with daytime temps staying in the twenties and Friday will be a piece of Heaven with a high of twenty-two degrees. Hit me with your best shot Old Man Winter 'cause I know Spring is nipping at your heels!
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Ah! There is a wonderful cat fight going on in the Tennessee legislature. The Republican majority isn't getting its way and is in a snit! I love it!
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Rumor says the city's only K-Mart Super Center is closing its doors. It was built in 1994, and Carolyn did construction cleanup there before it opened.
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The old Snap-On Tools building has been purchased by a Michigan company and will be used primarily for distribution of marble counter-top products manufactured up north. Few locals will be employed.
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Here is another negative side to living in a small city: Ritz Camera has closed its doors in the JC Mall. Hopefully it will relocate to one of the strip malls, but it is doubtful. There are no other dedicated photography stores in the area as far as I know.
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The Johnson City Development Authority (JCDA) is looking for more tax payer money to waste on "revitalizing" downtown. They are up in arms and saying downtown has a reputation of being an unsavory place for people to visit and shop.

A few thoughts:

• JCDA has had decades and plenty of dollars to address this "problem"
• Why would anyone want to visit downtown ... there is little to see and even less to do
  
• Some of the most historic and interesting buildings (the Arcade building and the Majestic Theater) have been demolished to get rid of "undesirables"
• JCDA cannot seem to finish any project in a timely manner
• The projects JCDA does finish were useless from conception to completion and wind up unused or underused
• JCDA's crowning glory is the gaudy public library and it needed to be built a lot less extravagantly and in another location
• The core problems that JCDA was created to address have been given little consideration except for a lot of money wasted on "studies"
• JCDA hires many outside consultants but ignores all but the ones that tell them what they want to hear
  
• JCDA's highest priority is making nothing from something
  
• JCDA is downtown's and the city-in-general's biggest problem

Carolyn has a couple of accounts downtown, and one of them has been with her for 11 years. She or one-or-more of her employees are in downtown five nights each week, and over all these years, she has had no serious problems. They once heard a gunshot; they were once approached by a panhandler, and one time they saw a man taking a leak outside a tavern. Gun shots can be heard in any part of any town at just about anytime; I've been approaced by panhandlers in front of the mall and elsewhere; external tavern walls make wonderful urinals; it is life!

JCDA needs to be done away with, and the city needs to either make a commitment to fixing what is left of downtown, or to bulldozing it under.

Amen
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