The stars have finally aligned! Its a win for the people of the Town of Derry!
Yes its true, In a 7-0 vote at last nights town council meeting, the council voted to move ahead with plans on making improvements to the Manchester Rd area from Tsienneto Rd to the Londonderry line in the councils attempts to attract business and lowering residential taxes.
The 2006 planned project came to a halting stop when Walmart pulled its plan off the table and therefore not contributing the $900,000 it promised if approved. Those plans never stopped completely as the town spent $400,000 to do the pre-lim engineering work that needed to get done.
Almost three years later, after goal setting and identifying economic development as its number one priority ( which has not changed for the six years Ive been sitting)
The council came together as a whole to get the plans moving forward.
I wish to commend my fellow councilors who voted in favor in seeing that this project is a step in the right direction in trying to help offset residential tax burden on the single family home owners of our town.
This was a very satisfying moment for me as a councilor because it shows once the council puts personal attacks behind them and concentrates on goals and shows the town that its elected officials can actual get things done.
What do you think? Will the plan work in attracting business? Let us know how you feel!
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31 comments:
How is Fairbanks decision to jack up Wal-mart sitting now?
Great Job Janet(and Coyle the snake deserves dishonorable mention too!)
A bird in hand is worth.......
Please defeat her when she comes up for election. Then chase her and Rose out of town!
BC, I am no fan of Fairbanks. She is a public figure and can be talked about. But I do not think its wise to allow private citizens like Rose get badmouthed here.
Wow 12:36 - way to take what was supposed to be a positive discussion on a new initiative and turn it into yet another attack.
BC - you should try and keep things on topic and stop the outright attacks.
Also, I hope the plan is successful in attracting new business to Derry.
Sorry to be so negative.
But reality is fact. Fairbanks message and delivery made Wal-Mart put their checkbook away. So where we had development we now hope to get it. Singularly we have her to blame. Derry should remember her actions as she engineered a reputation for Derry on how our disfunctional government regards development.
Developers certainly will remember.
Rose was a useless distraction.
She MADE herself a public figure and deserves the legacy of being the disruption of 2009. Accepting an apology shows more class than offering one.
Fairbanks, Rose and class do not deserve mention on the same page.
I agree. BC this is your blog and you are responsible for the tone. Do you want intelligent conversation or ignoramuses like 12:36? Bad postings chase away the good. Who would want to be associated with 12:36?
A waste of money
Finally some good news...lets hope it bears fuite. nice to see the town moving forward
BC,
Kudos to you and the entire Council for voting to move this forward - I am very much in favor of this project, HOWEVER... When it comes to funding, is this going to be another classic case of "say one thing, do another Coyle"?
What is the funding mechanism that will be used, Bond or TIF? There was an extensive discussion about this part of the project on this very blog. I think I know where you stand, but not so much with your fellow concilors.
While I am glad to see the council working well together. I'm not sure the Field of Dreams model will work here. IMHO widening that section of road is not going to be what attracts business to those 200 acres. Particularly in this economy. It will help the rush hour and Saturday traffic - so still a benefit to the townspeople - but not the panacea for the taxes some are touting.
It’s time to take off the “Janet Fairbanks is the cause of all evil glasses.” Wal-Mart is a multi billion dollar company. Don’t believe for a minute they pulled out of Derry because they didn’t like one Town Councilor. Wal-Mart is in the business of making money. If they felt Derry was the right economic climate to build their facility they would have done whatever was required to get the job done. Wal-Mart conducted a market study of the region and face it, realized they could get a bigger bang for their buck in another community.
So at $6+ million (plus 5%?interest)= $9.5 million +/-, how much should we figure we are paying for less traffic on Saturdays? What do you think 5,000 cars per Saturday??? Looks like about $2 per car that will no longer be inconvienced. Enjoy!
"Field of Dreams" is dead on. (unless you own the land to be purchased, in which case: "It's a Wonderful Life").
We are stuck in the big box mentality. Perhaps we would be better off getting one small college into town (paying zero real estate taxes) than 5 big boxes generating minimum wages?
11:49
Thus you dispute that Coyle and Janet "The global economist" set a tone that Wal-mart didn’t/wouldn’t put up with? I agree they went somewhere else (despite Janet’s assertion that because of the economy they would not be building anywhere proven wrong with the announcement of 150 new Super- centers on line in 2009). But you think they did not do all of those studies before they talked to Derry? You think they began those discussions for practice or out of sympathy? Janet and Coyle slapped their hands and they will not put up with that crap. They went where they were encouraged not discouraged. Let the blame rest where it belongs and stop apologizing for her. She is a waste of oxygen.
My prediction is that we will be waving good bye to our out of date Wal-Mart in 5 years or less because of this fool.
Not only does 11:49 dispute that, many others of us do as well. WalMart probably does not know Janet exists. They undoubtedly have a predictive model that runs inputting data on every community in the US and outputting expected margin numbers from hypothetical stores. When the economy shifts or new data comes in, everything is recalibrated (and Derry fell off a list). I build such predictive models for other retailers. It’s nothing personal and we don't input comments by town councilors, it’s just crunching numbers. Cold and impersonal.
By the way, numbers that might be inputs into the model include the local tax rate and estimates of local growth rates. Derry is shrinking or stagnant at best. That’s not a good thing from a retailer’s perspective. (We can discuss the causes of that situation.) Those factors very well might have entered into the equation. They are very quantifiable.
DJN
DJN...I don't agree. If you look at Wal-Marts entire history, they do not follow any norms. They set them. Why do you think that all of the economic indicators are off? It's because Wal-Mart is a very large and very different animal.
To others that think Wal-Mart pulling out was for other reasons, that may not be the truth. Wal-Mart comes in and asks for certain conditions favorable to making the most profit for least cost. If those conditions aren't met, then they will move elsewhere. It's not like their entire business depends on building a Super Wal-Mart in Derry. To a company the size of Wal-Mart, that is like a grain of sand on the beach. If you don't meet their demands, they will go elsewhere.
Mr. Newell,
Great to have you back.
We appreciate your explanation or predictive models.
Several questions however:
The population maximum of Derry is predictive. What changed from when Wal-Mart was interested to when they walked away?
The location of the store is the epicenter of the draw population. Is it then correct that as a result, population trends of the surrounding communities within the draw area come into the equation?
When developers network do they not discuss communities that have their act together vs. those who do not?
While I do not appreciate the accusatorial tone of the thread, I agree with the premise that Derry came across to the Developer who was negotiating for Wal-Mart and probably had strict parameters to make the deal, vocalized by Ms. Fairbanks and Mr. Coyle, who projected an anti-Walmart stance.
For that I agree they should be held responsible and accountable.
Can you send your thoughts?
If I were to believe a big multi billion dollar company,one of the Dow members hedged on coming to Derry because of one (or all for that matter) town councilors had an ax to grind with them, I must also believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus!
My point 11:40 and 7:53 is that it is impossible to determine (from the outside) why Wal-Mart changed its mind. Even for a member of Wal-Mart’s senior management, it would be difficult to answer that question. We would need knowledge of their proprietary site location models; we would need to know the update cycle of those models, the data not just on Derry but on all other competitive sites, the internal politics of the organization, etc.
My point is that it is extremely doubtful that comments by town councilors in Derry NH ever entered into the decision process, particularly because they are not quantifiable. In part Wal-Mart achieved its place in the world through superior use of data (e.g., its world class supply chain management). To allow some local or regional manager to make a seat of the pants decision based upon JF's of KC's remarks would be highly out of character.
Thank you both for very civil posts. They are becoming rare on this blog.
DJN
It's rare that I post here, but in regard to Wal-Mart, I feel I've got some significant experience covering their development in other communities that I'd like to share.
Some facts:
1. Wal-Mart does pay low wages and hires many part-time workers, so that they dont have to pay benefits. That said, unemployment in this country is at 9.7 percent and minimum wage looks good to a lot of people.
2. Wal-Mart isnt scared off by ANYBODY. What they want, they get. If they have to threaten, they threaten. If they have to sweeten the pot, then they sweeten the pot. But in the end, they build where they want.
3. A few years ago Wal-Mart announced plans to build a SuperCenter in Leominster, Mass. When Leominster tried to play hardball with the zoning restrictions, the announced plans to build less than two miles away in Lancaster, Mass. They kept both plans on the table, until finally Leominster approved their plans. Essentially, they used Lancaster to get Leominster to cave.
Given that there is already a Wal-Mart in Derry and that an upgrade wouldnt generate the same profit as a store in a fresh town, chances are decent that Wal-Mart was using Derry as a negotiating tool with another town.
4. Yes, Wal-Mart is building many new stores, but they also scrapped plans for more than 100 stores in 2009, citing the economy.
5. There is no tax rate panacea. There is nothing thnat can be done by anyone that will magically reduce everyone's tax rate, short of making massive cuts in services to the community to reduce the budget by millions of dollars.
What CAN be done is to encourage commericial development which will help keep the tax rate in check in coming years. That, coupled with responsible spending decisions, should help bring taxes in Derry reasonably in check in the coming years.
It doesn't matter if retail stores or an industrial park or a hotel is built, as long as non-housing development gets done.
Widening Route 28 isn't a solution, nobody claims it is. But it's a start. Well-done council! Don't listen to the hyperbole and vitriol from the extremists of either faction. Find common ground and work together.
hey Bill G,
walmart has strategically moved away from its superstore format due to sales trends and measurable customers dis-satisfaction with the format. as it turned out, having to walk a country mile to get a gallon of milk was getting old . check it out, it's all over the biz press.
you also may want to reconsider your posts discussion about walmart being tantamount to an indomitable force. as i recall, it was just last month, walmarts plan to build in miramar, fl. lost a court appeal and the deal was tossed. if memory serves me correctly, the sun-sentinel is the paper of record in those parts. i read about it quickly on a bloomberg data feed.
in fact, i have just googled the story for you. below are the first few paragraphs. it was covered by the miami hearld and picked up by the sun-sentinal on 08-13-09:
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Wal-Mart drops effort to build supercenter in Miramar after storm of opposition
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By Diana Moskovitz
The Miami Herald
6:33 p.m. EDT, August 13, 2009
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MIRAMAR - In the battle of the megastore and the homeowners, the residents won.
Looking to build yet another 220,000-square foot supercenter, Wal-Mart set its sights on 29 acres at Flamingo Road and Miramar Parkway. In 2005, it acquired the property for $10 million.
But then Miramar's Monarch Lakes residents raised a storm, worried about traffic and congestion for an already bustling hub. The City Commission, surprising to some, voted the project down -- leading to a Wal-Mart lawsuit to overturn the vote.
But now the deal is officially dead. A judge has denied their appeal, and Wal-Mart is listing the land, which has been upgraded since the purchase, for $19.6 million.
"Our plans to build the store were not approved," spokeswoman Michelle Belaire said, "therefore, we can't go build our store."
Residents, backed by a high-powered Miami law firm, savor the win.
"We had our own army. Each neighborhood had a leader, they were like neighborhood captains, and they had people beneath them," said organizer Carl Lanke. "We organized pretty much as you do on a political campaign."
The Miramar controvery arose at a time Wal-Mart was pushing for several Broward stores.
One planned for Davie is caught up in a federal lawsuit. Another was eyed as part of a town center-style project in North Lauderdale, but the downtown project died.
Miramar's battle began in 2005, when residents learned that Wal-Mart had proposed a 24-hour supercenter next door to Monarch Lakes, a sprawling community of pastel-colored homes and Spanish tile roofs........
--------------------------------------- CVA
Bill,
Thank you for your input.
It remains unfortunate that so many think that Wal-mart is some evil alien race. Wal-mart is not the panacea of homeowner tax relief. At best it was a start.
But Wal-mart was the panacea for the widening of Rt. 28. Derry let that slip away and now we have to speculate that it will do more than save 2 light cycles of traffic at great expense.
If, as you contend, Derry was a bargaining chip in development in another town will never be known. The developer certainly did not act like that. Too bad Jack Down can’t answer as to what happened. If he did this blog would explode from all the negative comments. Once again we lose the benefit of history which makes us susceptible to repeating the same mistake.
Point well taken, I hadnt heard about the Florida case. But it should be noted that it was newsworthy because it is rare.
My original point was simply that Wal-Mart is not easily "scared off", as one earlier poster suggested they might be.
As in the case in Florida, to win a battle against them, you need a very good attorney and the stomach to withstand a brutal court fight. They dont go down without a battle.
You're point about the superstores puts a finer point on what I'd been saying. They definitely made a strategic decision to pull back off some projects that were in the earliest of stages. The economy just wasn't right.
Some communities have welcomed Wal-Mart with open arms, others not so much.
9:18
two things I gleaned from that article:
1: Miramir's residents looked beyond saving a few $$ at Wally and saw all the added congestion in a bustling area. They didn't see adding traffic lanes as a solution like Derry is doing.
2: Miramir residents did not fall for the lowering of real estate taxes if a new Walmart moved in.
If anyone didn't catch it, Mark Bressard's column in the Derry News is a great read. It's well written and eloquently conveys thanks to a terrific public servant.
I think this is the same Mark Bressard who was at the foundation of the getting the Iraq Memorial at MacGregor. What a great day that was!
Mark's love of Derry and love of country shines brightly.
the simple facts are that Derry drove away WalMart and now we are spening only tax money on building a road that Wal-mart was willing to pay a large chunk of.
Janet Fairbanks was the shrill voice that caused the developer to put away Walmarts checkbook.
Those of you who continue to appologize for this schlemps actions, when are you going to stop?
Janet fairbanks cost derry and its taxpayers hard earned money.
That is a hard fact.
She does not represent me. Vote her out, get her out of derry politics.
9:03 who is the shrill voice? We have already discussed the Wal-Mart decision and it is obvious to all (except a few like yourself) that the comments of a councilor does not send one of the world's largest corporations fleeing. Get real.
Additionally you should consider that a low paying big box store might not be the answer to our prayers.
Anon 9:03 spoken like a typical town flunkie. Were you with the DEDC?
Derry is fortunate to have a non-sell out like Fairbanks seated on the council. At least you have one straight shooter.
10:38 Can't u read?
12:28, yes I can read. Can you make an intelligent comment?
Every weekend I get stuck in a massive traffic jam at Grandview flea market.
It seems the Derry police favor those going in and out of the market and us Derry citizens have to wait for long periods of time, missing our green traffic light until it cycles several times.
Then the other night I was going down Broadway at the Adams building and got stuck in traffic there too.
Now we have been told business is good for Derry however I do not see how it has benefited me or anyone else. Just the out of state vendors at the flea market and whoever gets the profit for those plays at the Adams building.
My taxes continue to rise and there is more business in Derry than ever before.
Stop wasting more hard earned taxpayers' money trying to sucker new business to Derry, only to create more traffic jams and more taxes for the citizens of Derry.
I find it beyond astonishing that a project 5 years in the works, widening Manchester Road/Route 28, could be so bungled up.
Derry has mostly residential property. Of that, about 50% is multifamily. There is little industrial/retail tax base to offset the burden on the single family residential taxpayers.
Opening Route 28 to the Londonderry line, will finally give Derry a shot at diversifying it's tax base. Since Londonderry has banned anything over 40,000 sq ft, off of exit 5 to Derry is open for development.
The majority of the work required will be at the Ashleigh Drive intersection. Since Derry decided years ago to do the engineering themselves, delaying the project until the markets changed and Wal-Mart pulled out, this intersection's costs have to be born by the municipality.
I own that corner. I was once very active in the DEDC, and it's president at one time. During my tenure we did the first TIFF district in Derry at Ash Street extension...and it was a real success.
I have met many times with the owners of the properties in the area, local and corporate, I have met with perspective buyers of these vacant properties. I have negotiated with, and had binding purchase and sales agreements with these parties.
During the 5 years this has been talked about, I have had 1, that's ONE, visit from anyone from the town concerning the project. Never asked to come to Town Hall and discuss anything, never been contacted by engineers, DOT, any councilors, nothing. Mr. Fowler came about 5 months ago, he is the only one who has bothered to discuss the project with me. That meeting was brief, went over new plans for the massive taking of my property, and was only followed up by a letter of intent to sell the land for a bag of peanuts.
One of the reasons I left Derry, was the frustration watching it's leaders all agree on what needs to be done...and then completely screw it up. Neither Route 28, nor exit 4A will be completed in our lifetimes, so there's no need to worry about bonds or TIFF districts. If after 5 years no one has bothered to talk to one of the most impacted land owners, then it is simply a nice fairy tale to read to the kids.
It's too bad Derry can't figure out how to simply widen a road, when the benefits are so critically important.
2:34
It appears you have a major conflict of interest in this matter.
How did you ever serve on the DEDC and keep a straight face?
Yes, I agree the town council screws up at times, this is a classic example, throwing money at the DEDC with you as its president!
Good thing it's changed a little now.
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