![[Valid RSS]](/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
« War profiteering | Home | How much can YOU borrow from the city, interest-free? »
April 20, 2008
The poisoned community
My local neighborhood association (of which I am not an official member, but whose emails I receive) is quite concerned about a new "teen club" being planned for Brainerd Road. Area residents have reason for alarm, too: remember Club KAOS just down the road on Lee Hwy? The former Yee's Crab House was converted to a teen night spot, and multiple reports of violence, including at least one shooting, meant a rather swift demise for the venue.
No one wants scenes like that, or like those that have occurred at certain downtown clubs, mere hundreds of feet from one's door, which is where "TOXIC" — the proposed name of the new club — would be located.
But the neighborhood's justified concerns are invariably and inextricably joined to some troubling sentiments, and these pairings make the situation a little more complicated for me, as much as I might initially be tempted to join the protest.
The first* point on which I take a different perspective is a plea to former City Council member Marti Rutherford, to use her experience in both real estate and local government** to try and somehow block the business from being able to open. This doesn't sit well with me. If I had a dollar for every business I didn't want near me, I'd be able to buy at least some of them out and send their owners off to retirement.
But government should not be the tool used to impede the free exercise of trade, except in clear cases of danger to the public (which can be argued here, but it should be done in a public setting, with a chance for the business owner to fully state his or her case). Should there be resistance from the community at large against a potentially "toxic," if perfectly legal, enterprise? Of course; but codifying the resistance in an inverse zoning loophole is, to me, not the right means of bringing that pressure to bear.
It's a complex situation, because Brainerd, after all, is a complex community. I don't want an increase in violence (nor in aggressive, as opposed to passive, police presence), and the chance of "TOXIC" being anything like "KAOS" does give me pause. But if I were in the neighborhood association, I might suggest having a delegation contact the proposed club's owner, and see if we could first assess the existence of any threat, and work out some mutually agreeable premises under which the club would operate. And I would be sure to include members of the broader community (meaning representatives of the north side of Brainerd as well) in these discussions.
Then, only if the business owner were to shun residents' advances, or was unable to provide sufficient assurances about community safety, would I start seeking other means of dealing with the situation. Thus government action would be the last resort, instead of the first impulse. A kind reader (of a draft version of this post) pointed out that there has to be something in it for the club owner to want to respond to residents' concerns; so I am actively thinking about carrots that could be offered instead of the government stick, and request your input into that thought process.
Openness, understanding, dialogue, compromise: these comprise the antivenin to most, if not all, poisonous elements in our society.
*The second underlying issue is a very sensitive topic: the ethnicity of the neighborhood association versus that of the presumed attendees of the club; and I wish to avoid having any written remarks misconstrued in any direction. Just know that this adds to the complex and delicate nature of the discussion at hand.
**You will doubtless recall Ms. Rutherford's use of double-sided business cards, with her City Council information on one side, and her realty business on the other.
Community | By joe lance | 10:29 AM
