Word!

In the most current issue of themail, Victoria McKernan writes:

A Gold Star for Abe Pollin

Abe Pollin thinks he deserves a fifty million dollar rebate from DC taxpayers to improve his Verizon Center because he helped revitalize the Gallery Place/Chinatown area. What a nice idea!

But why limit the distribution of government largesse only to one billionaire developer whose private investment has benefited our city (while providing him a handsome profit)? Why not rebates to everyone who has invested in neglected neighborhoods over the past twenty years and helped drag them out of decline?

Dupont Circle after all, was rescued, developed, preserved and made into a dynamic and profitable neighborhood largely through the effort and investment of gay men. How much do we now rebate the gays?

The transformation of Adams Morgan started with a couple of Ethiopian restaurants and some die-hard dive bars. What about a share for them? (At least quit hassling Madam's Organ over their license!)

Ben's Chili Bowl kept U Street alive through the post-riot dark ages, and the hundreds of crafters who have kept Eastern Market thriving over the years certainly deserve something.

I invested in Columbia Heights through twenty years of drugs and slums and did my small part in revitalizing there -- will DC taxpayers now buy me a new roof?

Is this the most ridiculous proposition ever put before the city council? If Mr. Pollin neglected to foresee the money he would need ten years down the road to keep up with repairs and improvements to his arena, then he has no business being in business! This vast sum will allegedly be paid for by increasing sales tax on tickets and merchandise sold at the center; so why doesn't Mr. Pollin simply raise his ticket prices and charge more for T-shirts himself? Isn't that how business works?

Regardless of how one feels about the "revitalized" (or homogenized, suburbanized, de-Chinafied) Chinatown area, it is definitely now a booming commercial center that brings in welcome tax dollars, and the Verizon Center certainly has something to do with it. For that we should give Abe Pollin our gratitude, maybe even a gold star to stick on his profit ledger. But a fifty-million-dollar rebate is wrong and absurd. And I can't even begin to address the suggestion that the city will benefit by ultimately being "awarded" a fifty-year-old sports arena in 2047! Are Evans, Gray, and Barry insane?

Clarence Tabb Jr. / The Detroit News. Before the Super Bowl, this billboard warned: "The World is Coming: Get in the Game Detroit."