by Ron Beitler

Got a phone call from a business owner today. He owns a business in the Giant shopping center. He honestly believes his small business will absolutely be hurt by Hamilton Crossings. When you own a small eatery in a shopping center you count on foot traffic to drive customers into your place of business. The “Giant shopping center” is located just blocks away from Hamilton Crossings and is clearly struggling.

Now please understand one thing. And this is my opinion but I think the business owner shares it. Competition is one thing. Business owners accept this. As a township Commissioner I encourage it. It’s survival-of-the-fittest thing. The problem is when the playing field is skewed. Plain and simply, TIF’s when abused and utilized in a community that isn’t distressed disrupts the free market. Utilizing this TIF in this area where an existing inventory of businesses have not benefited from the same treatment will hurt other business owners. Many small businesses in the “Giant” shopping center now will have to compete with potential new business in a government-chosen shopping center on an uneven playing field. At least one owner is certain this will hurt him and his employees.

Does anyone out there believe that this is fair? If so I’d love to hear why.

Competition is a fact of life for small business. It leads to more options and better pricing/service. When this happens the consumer wins. My problem is it’s fundamentally unfair to choose the winners with this kind of government intervention in a community that isn’t distressed. Hardworking people will be hurt by this TIF. Does anyone out there believe Lower Macungie is a distressed economy?

*Additional note: Some have said “well, this shopping center is run down” “That’s why no one wants to shop there”. I don’t disagree. The “Giant/Redners” shopping center is one of the worse “Strip Malls” in the whole Lehigh Valley. It’s dated. Ugly. Terrible. Traffic flows poorly. Some locations the parking lots are downright dangerous.

To that point, note that the same company owns the “Kohls” side. And it did acknowledge this. At least in terms of spending some major money on recent renovations of. This included new landscaping and a facade renovation (Kohls). From what I understand more improvements are coming and they are slowly making their  way to the “other” side where Giant is.

The point is, this is the natural order. Your shopping center is crummy and because of that you can’t attract good tenants? Then invest money and fix it. Or fail in the open and free market. What isn’t natural is when a gov’t chooses a winner. Then that new shopping center which “needed” the special treatment succeeds because it’s allowed to divert 50% of its taxes to repay bonds for 20 years. 

(Cross posted from Smart Growth in Lower Macungie)