Read Steve Harrison’s exhumation of the city of Charlotte’s insane dabbling with buying Eastland Mall and tell me I’m wrong. Republicans on city council manifestly thought they could buy John Lassiter the mayor’s chair by exploring a multi-million dollar taxpayer bailout of the distressed East Charlotte property.
At the end of September council GOPers voted in secret in pursue spending up to $24m. to buy Eastland. Only Demcorats Warren Turner and Michael Barnes voted against the scheme. City staff went to work — again in secret — to hammer out a $22m. deal to buy the mall and then spend an additional $8.37m. kicking out the tenants and knocking the building down. But after Anthony Foxx beat Lassiter, Republicans switched tracks and killed the deal. Lassiter’s low-ball motion to offer $7.4m. for the property was the coup de grace.
Lassiter tries to tell Harrison that market conditions had worsened so much in 35 days that his offer of one-third of the negotiated price made sense. In reality the only thing that had transpired was Election Day. Lassiter was out, Foxx was in and nobody on council aside from Nancy Carter had much interest in trying to continue to buy votes from East Charlotte with this dopey plan.
What will happen now is that mall owner LNR will begin to shut it down while Mayor Foxx tries to scramble around to find dollars to start construction of a $500m. streetcar, the initial phase of which will start in the Beatties Ford corridor, not Eastland. The city will loose the $400K it spent on options to buy parts of the mall and all those responsible for this mess will keep their jobs.
Ain’t democracy grand?
Bonus Observation: I should also note that former Republican city councilman turned six-figure city employee Pat Mumford was a point man in this farce.
