Terrible Business Ideas or Money Laundering?

[cosmicfolklore]

@woodsroad Yeh, I’ve watched the arts district move across Birmingham. The galleries set up in the cheap crappy part of town, then the area comes to life. Developers build the area up and price the arts off to the cheaper part of town… lather, rinse, repeat.

IDK, maybe it’s always been that way. But, it seems like it’s the developers who wind up with the better end of the deal.

 

[Hillcrest]

artsy-fartsy retail destination

What a great name for a store !

 

[Snook]

My daughter lived in a once bustling neighborhood in Pittsburgh (Bloomfield) for several years. At one time it had been predominantly Italian and Jewish, with great, affordable homes and a shopping street (Penn Ave) that runs across the city. But it had been on a downward slide for decades.

Developers started buying up the buildings on Penn when it hit rock bottom, building out some really nice retail spaces. Then COVID slammed on the brakes, and nothing moved. So they started leasing these new storefronts to art galleries, non-profits etc and very reduced, maybe free, rents. Now there’s music, street cocktails and a vibrant edge that developers crave, but seldom know how to create. Genius move. No vacant storefronts, lots of foot traffic. And they build the neighborhood into an artsy-fartsy retail destination. In time, the success of these low rent tenants will price them out of the market, franchises will move in, and fuck it all up.

That's the way it goes.

This sort of reminds me of SteelStacks in Bethlehem. I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole the other day and came across it, so I was poking around on Google maps looking at it. Thought it looked pretty cool, and a really neat concept to convert an abandoned factory into a multi-venue/bar/art exhibit kind of place. Have you ever been over there?

 

[anotherbob]

I worked at a restaurant briefly that people accused of being a front. And the thing was they're were correct. Just not for anything illegal. They sold baked goods to an insane number of restaurants. That place sucked. I worked with some interesting people there. Some interesting in good ways and some interesting in a at least I got good stories from being around them.