I had my biggest laugh of the week by reading pages 21 & 22 (of 125) of this week’s City Council workbook.  These pages were part of the minutes of our sham Historic Commission’s January 12 meeting, and documented one of their kangaroo court sessions.

It seems that an outsider (Ms. Chee Chee Rose) wanted to install “scrolling electronic reader boards” on the side of a downtown building.  Even though “the combined area of the signs falls within the amount of signage permitted” and “the downtown standards allow for illuminated signs”.

Mr. Kohler “noted that while these signs do not look historical in nature, the Commission may still determine that they are compatible with what the Commission believes the theme of what downtown may be.”

One of the vigilantes Commission members “felt that the signs were not aesthetically compatible with the character of downtown.”

The “Commission” unanimously rejected the signs!!!

What is so laughable about that, you ask???  Has ol’ Presta gone off his medication again???

Just a year ago, this very same aesthetically-concerned gang found the hanging of a couple of hundred junk auto hoods to be historically appropriate and completely compatible with the character of downtown, RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from the requested location of these signs!!!

What a sham this “commission” is!!!  It should be disbanded due to embarrassment, if for no other reason.

Gentlemen
Just give these HISTORIC DOWNTOWNERS a few more weeks and they will put another eatery out of bussiness.
Don’t ya just love that big ugly purple building…

There was an article about the local Smashburger franchisee in the newspaper today that demonstrates one of the points that I have been trying to make for years about downe towne Middletowne and the way that City Hall tries to direct business there.

You can read the entire article here http://www.middletownjournal.com/news/middletown-news/upscale-smashburger-looks-to-expand-in-area-1356491.html - http://www.middletownjournal.com/news/middletown-news/upscale-smashburger-looks-to-expand-in-area-1356491.html , but the following excerpt is the key point that I’d like to discuss:

“We’re always looking for sites” for the next round of Smashburger openings, “but locations are not easy to find — or not as easy as we thought it would be,” Rodenkirch said.

Kessling said she and Rodenkirch are looking for a site in Beavercreek near the Mall at Fairfield Commons. “It certainly has the traffic flow and the income levels they’re looking for", she said — and in the Lebanon and Mason areas of Warren County. “We have to find the right spots for a restaurant that sells a $6 burger,” Rodenkirch said.

This demonstrates that even a $6 hamburger restaurant does market studies/analyses prior to committing their capital to a location.  I doubt that these people would ever decide to put a Smashburger into downe towne Mid-Pointe Middletowne, no matter how many taxpayer dollars were wasted on olde tyme facades or how much the mayor hypes the first Fridays.  This location simply does not have “the traffic flow and the income levels they’re looking for”!!!

This is the same reason that we won’t see a high end book store, or any other national high end retailers that the local elites pine for, ever locate here.  Such companies always do a market analysis prior to committing to a location, and once they analyze the downe towne Mid-Pointe Middletowne market, the ball game is over.  The denizens of City Hall and the wannabe high society folks on South Main just do not skew the market statistics enough to make it a smart business decision.  As long as City Hall keeps waiting for these high-end businesses (and keeping all others out) they are just dooming our former downe towne to maintaining its ghost town status forever.