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Is STAR SMART?

We read that developers won’t build “University Town Center” (Glen Carbon) unless tax payers help pay for their new“900-acre retail and entertainment center.” 

But St. Louis is closing malls, St. Clair Square is losing businesses, restaurants are suffering.  In other words, we aren’t exactly booming.

In such an environment, is it realistic to think big new developments will bring in big new money, or will they merely divert retail sales from established businesses?

Smart growth brings new growth to the table.  It doesn’t just rearrange the chairs.  Would this project create empty shopping centers just a few miles away? 

If it’s new money, that’s smart; but if they dip into your pocket to take sales tax revenue from existing municipal and other services, what would you call it?

STAR (sales tax and revenue bonds) is not SMART unless it generates more business than now exists.

To do that requires more people spending more money.  What are the chances of that happening?

Madison and St. Clair counties combined have grown less than 3% in population over the last eight years.  That’s about half the growth rate of the rest of the St. Louis Metropolitan area, which itself is growing only half as fast as the USA. 

Stop158:Citizens for Smart Growth discusses these and other issues on its website (www.stop158.org.)

Richard Ellerbrake, spokesperson

Stop158:Citizens for Smart Growth

(Richard P. Ellerbrake

866 Old Enterprise Farms

Lebanon, Illinois 62254-1802

618.632.3158)