The Durham City Council just can’t admit that the Rolling Hills project was a big mistake and they just ought to cut the taxpayers’ losses.
Instead of saying, “That’s it. We’ve poured enough money down that rathole,” they are considering throwing another $6.3 million into the joke of a project.. And that’s just to pay for “the early stages,” according to The Herald-Sun, and includes no construction at all. Who came up with that deal?
More than 10 years ago, when I was managing editor of The Herald-Sun, then-Business Editor Ward Best and I did some research on Rolling Hills for a series he was planning. I don’t have the files, but as I recall we calculated that everyone living there could have been given a three-bedroom house and the city would have saved money.
Council Member Eugene Brown, a Realtor himself, sees the issue pretty clearly:
“With a lot of people in Durham, when they hear about this, their response is going to be, simply, ‘Here we go again, throwing good money after bad,'” Council member Eugene Brown said. “It’s a very salient argument and persuades a lot of people.”
The problem with Rolling Hills, Heritage Square, and all the other anemically performing government-assisted projects in Durham is that they are not market driven. If a real businessman wouldn’t build condos at Rolling Hills, then the city shouldn’t. Non-market based projects are destined to fail simply because they are supply with no demand.
City Manager Patrick Baker says Durham is in a “better place economically” now. Well, all the more reason to get government OUT of development. Any lasting development and economic successes are going to be fully private and non-government subsidized. If a private developer feels he or she can be successful with a project on the Rolling Hills location, let them spend their own money to do it, take the risk and reap the rewards.
That way, the taxpayers pay nothing and the city still gets the benefit of the property taxes. That is the way most local governments would go, at least the ones who don’t use boondoggle projects as a means of redistributing wealth.
