Should Charlotte's convention center start trying to capture the "green convention" business? Successful event planner Mary Tribble, who's back from a national conference on the subject, said Tuesday she believes more national conventions will aim their business at cities and facilities that can market themselves as "green." The Charlotte Convention Center is not LEED-certified, of course. [LEED = Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.] Nor will the new NASCAR Hall of Fame be. (See my May 23 posting, below.)
Tribble says she and Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority honcho Tim Newman are forming a task force to see what can be done in Charlotte.
-- In Wake County, even conservative tax-watchdoggers are pushing FOR a land transfer tax to generate money to build schools. Click here for the N&O's story.
Excerpt: Even former county commissioner Phil Jeffreys, speaking as a member of the fiscally conservative Wake County Taxpayers Association, was on board for a transfer tax. "We need to make sure we go to the legislature and really push on real estate transfer fees," said Jeffreys, who was voted off the board in the last election after voting "no" on many spending proposals.
-- In fast-growing Chatham County, county commissioners on Monday enacted a moratorium on residential development. Click here for the story.
-- Courtesy of one of my favorite planning info sources, Planetizen.com, here's a link to a Wall Street Journal article about the trauma subprime loans are causing in many minority neighborhoods, including a long-established middle-class area of Detroit. According to the article, so many homeowners are facing foreclosure now that it may well erase any gains in homeownership the nation has seen. (And don't forget the Observer's coverage, complete with online map of local foreclosures. Here's a link.)
--And finally, also from Planetizen, here's a piece in which the author takes aim at Reason magazine's assumptions about mass transit versus road-building.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
"Green" conventions? And other news
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
8 comments:
Mary,
From the portion about the loans-
Are we supposed to feel sorry for someone with statements like the one below?
"I knew better than to be stupid like that," she says. "But they caught me at a time when I was down."
She wasn't alone. Locals say West Outer Drive became a beehive of renovation activity in the first half of the decade, even as the economy sagged. Up the block from Ms. Williams, Ordell Walker, who says he left a job at DaimlerChrysler several years ago, put in a new driveway, glass-brick windows on the basement and stairwell, and much more. To get the cash, he jacked up his mortgage to $205,000 from $108,000 in 2002, partly with the help of World Wide. "A lot of people took the cash," he says. "I wish I'd never done it myself."
At what age do people need to start being responsible for themselves and their families?
26 year old with 6 children? I'm sure his job outlook when child #2 was born was the same as when they had #6. Did they think things were going to get cheaper?
Thad
The era of personal responsibility is sadly gone. It's always somebody else who got us in trouble.
Just another indication of our victim mentality.
"Should Charlotte's convention center start trying to capture the "green convention" business? "
You've got to be kidding me.
CLT - the city who's motto is:
"If your a developer, BULLDOZE everything, start from clay earth, agree to plant a bunch of Bradford Pear trees, and we'll give you a few (5 to infinity) dollars"
I am so in the wrong business.
The convention center. Another, usually forgotten, black hole for taxpayers.
The other problem with the reporting on these loans is that it naturally has negative liberal bias to it.
The delinquency rate reported in the article is 17%, many of those may even eventually be foreclosed. So what? Who cares?
83% are paying on time!!! The vast majority of those people would not get loans under normal programs. They would be confined to the prison of renting from someone else.
I've got to ask which is a more predatory lending practice - preventing 83% of low-income home buyers from getting their home, or watching out for the 17% who deliberately buy a house they can't afford and then get into trouble?
I've got to go with the majority on this one.
An ad for "free Xbox 360" just talked to me when I clicked on this blog.
Talking or audio ads are totally obnoxious.
I thought the Observer was better than that.
It must be light rail's fault.
The Planetizen article is absolute garbage. They dare to attack Reason for considering trips to places that transit doesn't serve! That's the whole POINT - transit by its very nature is geographically confined, and RAIL IS THE WORST because you can't adjust routes the way you (in theory) can with buses. (I say 'in theory' because as soon as you try to move, shrink or cancel an existing route, the three people who ride it shriek to their council member and the route is preserved.)
Mary does those of us intelligent people who know how wasteful and useless transit is by posting this link.
"An ad for "free Xbox 360" just talked to me when I clicked on this blog.
Talking or audio ads are totally obnoxious."
I agree completely. I've sent e-mail to Rick Thames asking him if he will make sure Charlotte.com stops using ads with sound.
Post a Comment