TKC BREAKING AND EXCLUSIVE NEWS!!! METCALF SOUTH GLENWOOD ARTS THEATER SUPPORTERS ORGANIZE AND DEMAND RENT CONTROL FROM DEVELOPERS!!!
TKC NOTE: Here's an important missive on and E-MAIL BLAST that's circulating amid talk of Metcalf South redevelopment plans or lack thereof . . . Check it:
Metcalf South Pre-Meet E-Mail Blast
"Can please pass around these questions to the movie group attending tonight?
"Give the entire sheet to everyone--so they can track to make sure it all gets asked.
"I hope each question or comment gets asked in front of the entire group. And then, the "seed person" in each breakout circle needs to repeat it and stress its importance so that each circle's staffer submits OUR IDEAS as one "vote" from the public. Lane4 is smooth, trying to divide and conquer. Don't allow that."
1. Lane4 and Kroenke Group needs to relocate the Glenwood Arts within the new project, and provide RENT CONTROL. A 20 year lease, starting at their current rate, with a maximum increase of 7% per year.
2. (Similar but slightly different:) Rent control for the Glenwood Arts would be the FAIR THING TO DO-- AND THERE IS PRECEDENT: Like they have done so successfully in New York City...to keep the cultural heritage and the current customer base in place.
3. They need to agree NOT to replace the Glenwood Arts with AMC or any teenager-oriented movie complex. Teen hordes drive away regular partons. Just look at the Plaza and Ward Parkway and even Town Center and AMC30. One of our movie club attorneys has already suggested that it might legally be "theft of good will" if they put in some other theatre vendor instead of our Glenwood Arts. Stealing the market share Brian and Ben Mossman have built up in OP over many years.
4. Lane4 and the Kroenke Group can't keep the sign, which IS an historic structure over 50 years old, unless they keep Glenwood Arts as operators. And If they destroy the sign, it's destroying the county's heritage as the center of suburbia. Are you even aware that the OP Heritage Foundation and the OP Historical Society and the JoCo Museum are looking at building America's Museum of Suburbia??
5. Since KIFF, the Ks. Intl. Film Festival is the ONLY film festival in Kansas, now in its 14th season, Lane4 and the Kroenke Group needs to step up and be the major sponsor of the festival. And, even if there is a year (hopefully make that date after Festival 15: October 2015, (not 14) when you must tear down these auditoriums, for reconstruction, you should remain the festival sponsor while you rebuild the NEW Glenwood Arts auditoriums.
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After those get asked, here is a secondary list:
6. By the way, you claim Lane4 is partners with the Kroenke Group. What is the ownership split? Your website claims Lane4 is strictly fee-based only, so does that mean that Mr. Kroenke owns 100% and you are just the operating partner?
7. How much did you pay for the two sites-where you claim you have no idea what you want to do? How much of that money was Lane4's share? Or did you just get the job title of partner?
8. Mr. Kroenke is the 8th largest landowner in the US--he owns three times more land --just in the US, than the city of Los Angeles. (That's not counting his land in Canada, where he has take over public lakes and will not allow the public to hunt or fish on public land any more.) Over the past 30 years, it's his very consistent practice and history to have a so-called perating partner do the heavy lifting of securing tax abatements for him and wooing the public, since he never grants interviews. But then he buys them out. So--what does your ownership or management contract list, currently, about when he can buy you out?
8. Mr. Kroenke owns 1% of all Walmart stock. He builds Walmarts on 60% of all the properties he develops, according to the Internet. So, does he plan to build a Walmart where Metcalf South stood? If not, will you state that, outright, tonight?? That way the neighbors don't have to worry about the sound, Sunday mornings at 7am, of air compressors changing tires, from the Walmart auto bays, which are ALWAYS placed away from the main streets.
9. Mr. Kroenke, through 2006, had secured over $119 million in TIF bonds and tax abatements, of which $56 million was to build more Walmarts. Even tho the Vision Metcalf plan shows the citizens wanted this to be new urbanism with trees in the middle of Metcalf, and a Nieman Marcus, is Mr. Kroenke really planning to build another Walmart? And ask our taxpayers to subsidize the infrastructure?
10. Mr. Kroenke, your partner, bought a $20 million vacation home in Aspen, and a $22 million home in Malibu, purchased from billionaire Dodi Fayed where Princess Diana planned to live. So he doesn't really NEED tax subsidy, does he?? Can't he build his Walmart without us taxpayers subsidizing it?
Note: If Owen Buckley dodges the question--interrupt at the end and say, "You didn't answer the question!"
Here is the link about Kroenke group
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4. A promise that in the future Glenwood will not be torn down so a Bob Evans can go in it's place like they did to the original!
ReplyDeleteThe answer isn't rent control it's property tax control. Welcome to Johnson County.
ReplyDeleteWhat a bunch of crap. The property was bought outright without condemnation or other public assistance. Within the allowance of the zoning regs, the owner has every right to maximize his ROI. For God's sake, it's a crappy (and empty) 50 year old mall, not exactly St. Peters Basilica or Constitution hall.
ReplyDeleteThe answer to the first five questions is "prove to me that your subsidized existence increases the viability of or return on my investment", and the response to the rest is "none of your damn business".
I agree, what's with all of the hostility? Answer to most of the questions, "None of your Fucking Business"!!!
ReplyDeleteThere's never an end of folks with no money who think they should decide how other people should spend their money and what they should do with their property.
ReplyDeleteAnd in the end they usually go to the taxpayer to fund their dreams.
These developers will do what's best to maximize the return on their investment. They're in business, not some make-believe historical society.
If these folks want to decide what happens to the theater, they can raise some money themselves or online.
I told my bartender I'm demanding "rent control" for my bar stool and drinks over the next 20 years, as it's only fair.
ReplyDeleteHe cut me off for the night and said to come back when I'm sober.
LoL ^^^^^^
ReplyDeleteLoL ^^^^^^
ReplyDeleteLoL ^^^^^^
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's none of the taxpayer's business UNTIL Kroenke and his front man, Owen Buckley, march into OP City Hall and the Council, whining about how they can't afford to actually tear it down (or, north of 95th, former Kmart, blow up that rock with dynamite) without tax abatement. waaa, can't afford to pay their fair share of property and sales taxes to Shawnee Mission Schools. And then go crying to the Ks. Legislature that they can't possibly open their new Walmart without STAR bonds to cover all the infrastructure, another taxpayer subsidy, of the 8th biggest landowner billionnaire in the US.
ReplyDeleteHey, Mr. Kroenke owns the Denver Nuggets basketball team. Has he publicly repudiated his rich buddy Don Sterling at the LA Clippers yet? Not the last time I checked...
ReplyDeleteExcuse me, Mr. 9:11pm Anonymous poster, your facts are incorrect.
ReplyDeleteIn KC it's generally the very RICH who hire those $450 an hour attorneys --and Lane4--to get into the taxpayers' pocket. Not the poor.
As for you, Mr. 6:30 pm, LOL of course you are right--Metcalf South is not St. Peter's Basilica or Constitution Hall. But do you seriously believe the owner of 1% of all Walmart stock is going to build us a Cathedral to Falling Prices?!
ReplyDeleteYou want some facts? Let's see attendance numbers for an "Art Theater"? Compare that to the number of people who shop at the Hi- Vee just a few miles to the west.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember correctly, that grocery store is SITTING ON THE SAME LAND THAT ONCE HELD A MOVIE THEATER.
Movies vs, mortadella vs. Mountain Dew vs. Macaroni. The numbers will tell you which way to go.
Godfather I. "Tell Michael it was just business."
Mortadella.
ReplyDeleteBaloney.
Indeed.
This Metcalf South site is going to be a Walmart, with tax subsidy. Owned by the Kroenke billionnaire bullies.
Unless the public objects.
The OP City Council now gets to decide if Vision Metcalf was just meringue, a fluffy pipe dream waste of those citizen's vision and time. Or if they are gonna sell out and convert the center of OP, Metcalf South to another wasteland of commercialism.
If OP doesn't step up and insist on something meaningful at 95th and Metcalf, then in 10 years, the real center of JoCo will be smack dab where the blue potato chip sculpture is, in that other vast wasteland, 119th & Metcalf.
ReplyDeleteWe all have the life and the lifestyle we are willing to put up with.
ReplyDeletePass the chips, Danno.