Ran into a situation today that I am sure we will be witnessing more
frequently.

I know a young couple who operate a very decent little sales and
service shop in a middle sized city north of Seattle on Puget Sound.
It's a family business that has supported them and their kids for the
last several years, but when I ran into them today they
mentioned they had decided to close up shop.

Interesting, and sad, is the reason why:

The local marina is expanding at their location. That should be good
news, except for the fact that as part of the expansion a "public/
private partnership" is building a fancy new condominium complex. A
huge new mooring basin has been dredged and developed, but guess what?
Those slips aren't available long term to the general public (i.e. the
taxpayers who funded the development of this public land), they are
being given to the condo development company as a reward for
developing the condo village at the site, and any time that a condo
resident wants to purchase one of the slips (from the development
company, of course), any tenant that is merely renting the slip will
be subject to eviction.

How this concerns my friends and their boat shop: They are currently
occupying a fairly old building that fronts a road running along the
perimeter of the marina. They have a small office and retail area, and
several service bays.

"Our lease is up pretty soon, and the Port is going to tear down this
building," they said. "We've been offered the same square footage in
one of the new commercial buildings that will be part of the
condominium complex, but there's going to be a difference in rent.
Right now, we pay about $25,000 per year to rent this space, but after
they force us to move next year the rent would go up to $14,000 a
month. That's a total of $168,000 per year in rent, or $143,000 more
than we're paying now. We can't see any reason to keep the doors open
with that sort of increase in overhead."

Obviously my friends did what anybody else would do in the same
situation- took a careful look at how much they're able to put in
their pockets each year with the current overhead, subtracted $143,000
from that number to reflect the future overhead, and looked at the
amount left over and asked, "why bother"?

Congrats to the greedy arse port authorities and the high dollar condo
developers. They have completely overlooked that fact that most of the
infrastructure for boating consists of small and medium size family
businesses. Those software millionaires living the fat life in the
waterfront condo McMansions have a rude awakening in store......even
if they buy the slips out from under the public and moor their gold
plated boats, their very presence will have raised real estate values
to the point where nobody will be able to remain in business to
service or maintain them.

Coming before all that very long to the waterfront near you...
Pretty sad.

Coming before all that very long to the waterfront near you...
Pretty sad.



money makes the world go round. The Republican way of life. Fatten up the
rich. Draw the line fatter between the rich & everyone else. Watch the
peasants squirm.

On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:23:06 GMT, "longshot" wrote:



Coming before all that very long to the waterfront near you...
Pretty sad.

money makes the world go round. The Republican way of life. Fatten up the
rich. Draw the line fatter between the rich & everyone else. Watch the
peasants squirm.

And exactly how many members of that city council are Republicans?
I'll bet dollars to donuts that the majority of the city council, and
the state legislative committee who over saw the development, if any,
are Democrats.

Wanna take that bet?

On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:58:43 GMT, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:

On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:23:06 GMT, "longshot" wrote:



Coming before all that very long to the waterfront near you...
Pretty sad.

money makes the world go round. The Republican way of life. Fatten up the
rich. Draw the line fatter between the rich & everyone else. Watch the
peasants squirm.

And exactly how many members of that city council are Republicans?
I'll bet dollars to donuts that the majority of the city council, and
the state legislative committee who over saw the development, if any,
are Democrats.

Wanna take that bet?

And I'll go one step further. Most of the people buying the slips and
condos are most likely Democrats or support the Democrats.

Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:23:06 GMT, "longshot" wrote:

Coming before all that very long to the waterfront near you...
Pretty sad.
money makes the world go round. The Republican way of life. Fatten up the
rich. Draw the line fatter between the rich & everyone else. Watch the
peasants squirm.

And exactly how many members of that city council are Republicans?
I'll bet dollars to donuts that the majority of the city council, and
the state legislative committee who over saw the development, if any,
are Democrats.

Wanna take that bet?

I'd be more interested to know how many of those key decision makers
either got deals on units, or options to buy at less than market prices.
That or the decision makers, regardless of party affiliation are also
real estate types profiting from the other side of the transaction.

On Jul 20, 3:23?am, "longshot" wrote:
Coming before all that very long to the waterfront near you...
Pretty sad.

money makes the world go round. The Republican way of life. Fatten up the
rich. Draw the line fatter between the rich & everyone else. Watch the
peasants squirm.

Also disapppointing is the fact that it took just one post to turn
this from a land use isue that affects important boating
infrastructure into a political peeing contest.

Hey, longshot- it ain't the "fault" of the Republican party.
Hey, shortwave- it ain't the "fault" of the Democratic party.

Port Commissions are under a lot of pressure to produce the highest
possible economic return to their communities. In doing so, some of
them lose sight of thier basic mission- to operate a maritime port.

If the only consideration in every community is "what is the highest
and best use of every single square inch of property and how do we
move from here to there?" any industry that requires any amount of
space to operate or must by nature compete with intensive condo
development for "desirable" locations (i.e waterfront) is in the
crosshairs.

We're going to wind up with two economic classes in this country,
upper and lower. The lower class won't be able to afford to boat, and
the upper classes will drive waterfront values to the point where
prices for boats,motors, and service would be have to be much higher
than at present to cover overhead. That's exactly the dilema my
friends faced... there's no way to raise prices enough to offset a
700% rent increase. If they did raise prices that high, they would
lose most of their existing trade.

On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 08:53:03 -0700, Chuck Gould
wrote:

Port Commissions are under a lot of pressure to produce the highest
possible economic return to their communities. In doing so, some of
them lose sight of thier basic mission- to operate a maritime port.

If the only consideration in every community is "what is the highest
and best use of every single square inch of property and how do we
move from here to there?" any industry that requires any amount of
space to operate or must by nature compete with intensive condo
development for "desirable" locations (i.e waterfront) is in the
crosshairs.

I was just pointing out that one poster's assumption in incorrect.
Notice that poster hasn't rebutted that comment, thus it's a dead end
on this thread.

All city governments are pushing for more revenue and they will get it
anyway they can.

The question is how can they take maximum benefit from their
situation. I'm pretty sure that high dollar boats mean high dollar
repairs and it would seem that they are positioned to take advantage
of that.

For example, the largest small boat repair center in CT that is an all
around repair shop is located smack in the middle of CT as far from
any water as you can possibly get.

Just a thought.

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...

I was just pointing out that one poster's assumption in incorrect.
Notice that poster hasn't rebutted that comment, thus it's a dead end
on this thread.

All city governments are pushing for more revenue and they will get it
anyway they can.

The question is how can they take maximum benefit from their
situation. I'm pretty sure that high dollar boats mean high dollar
repairs and it would seem that they are positioned to take advantage
of that.

For example, the largest small boat repair center in CT that is an all
around repair shop is located smack in the middle of CT as far from
any water as you can possibly get.

Just a thought.


Yup... the Rosborough boat company has been doing it's finishing work in one
of our Industrial Parks, a couple miles from the ocean.
http://www.rosboroughboats.com/about.html

On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:23:06 GMT, "longshot" wrote:



Coming before all that very long to the waterfront near you...
Pretty sad.



money makes the world go round. The Republican way of life. Fatten up the
rich. Draw the line fatter between the rich & everyone else. Watch the
peasants squirm.


Not that simple. Our useless Democratic Governor in North Carolina
gave a sweeheart lease deal to some of his buds to make the public
marina at Southport a rich man's folly. The local tax payers have
taken it on the chin pretty much like Gould describes.
http://www.ncgop.org/corruption/?pageid=cronies.html
http://wilmington.johnlocke.org/blog/?p=668
http://wilmington.johnlocke.org/blog/?p=669
http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclu...e.html?id=3429

My family and I have spent a lot of fun times at that marina. However,
under the new management, we no longer find anything of interest to us
there. Especially the astronomical fees.
--

Grady-White Gulfstream, out of Oak Island, NC.

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On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 00:50:03 -0700, Chuck Gould
wrote:

Coming before all that very long to the waterfront near you...
Pretty sad.

Look what happened in New London. Took all of Fort Trumbull
neighborhood for condos and who is going to live in them.

Gotta love them Democrats.