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Saving
the Flavor
I spent the first half of my life living in the funkier parts of New York City only to see the process of gentrification ruin neighborhoods and destroy the ethnic and family businesses which were taken over by real estate developers and corporations in the 1980s. There used to be neighborhoods with antiquarian booksellers, family-owned clothing stores and affordable restaurants. These neighborhoods used to smell like Italian baked bread and Russian borsht. Now there is the glitz of sweatshop-produced designer clothes and the stench of fast food hamburgers. The people whose families had owned businesses in the city for generations were priced out by greedy developers and now, neighborhoods that used to have artist's lofts, storefronts and galleries are so expensive that most of the artists, like me, have moved out. I moved to Eugene because I was tired of carving out a life and a network of friends and family, only to have them leave one by one because they were not "competitive" enough to survive in the neighborhoods where they were born. When I first moved to Eugene there were several booksellers downtown. Now there are fewer. When I walk downtown, I can't help but notice how many oblivious drivers run stop signs and fail to yield to pedestrians, and I fail to see the benefit of more cars and SUVs clogging the area under these conditions. The misuse of eminent domain that was recently given a stamp of approval by a Supreme Court and federal government bought and paid for by corporate interests is just another step towards gentrification everywhere; and capital accumulation by the wealthy at the expense of small businesses and working people. Eminent domain should only be applied when necessary, when "The Public‚" meaning everyone, needs it and benefits from it. If we are not careful to preserve the atmosphere and flavor of downtown, the corporations that will be attracted will not be local. They will beg for the same tax breaks that others have received, while not caring very much if their employees have to ask social services for food and medical care. Why should the founders of local businesses be forced to relinquish their life's work to developers who only intend to serve the interests of the gentry? Why should business owners pay for mortgage, insurance, taxes, and advertising for years and then be told that they can't ask what they want for their property? Isn't this America, where hard work and tenacity pays off? Apparently not. The degeneration of downtown into an economically depressed area was a deliberate attempt by the real estate interests to keep business from taking hold downtown — since they would eventually have to pay off these owners to get them to leave. So they let downtown rot until they could get the city to agree to their development scheme. I would like to see the downtown thrive, and no doubt Eugene real estate developers will be the ones to create the infrastructure. However, let's not begin by screwing people out of their life's work! If these real estate developers can afford to have the eyesore of empty storefronts monopolize the downtown Eugene environment for more than a decade, and if they can make the taxpayers pay for tearing up the streets downtown, making struggling businesses re-locate or go under because of the mess and inconvenience — then they can afford to pay Lazar and others a fair market price for their property and make a downtown for all of us. Eileen Polk is a professional photographer and writer who moved to Eugene from New York City in 1974. Her photos and stories will be published in a new book, Punk is Dead, Punk is Everything, coming out this month, and a gallery show of her photography is planned at Feinstein's Museum of Unfine Art in November 2006.
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