The Damages?
And now, nearly a year later, Port O' Call has been torn down and the lot is standing idle waiting for federal money to build it.
Documents obtained by ABC 4 show that so far, the government has sunk more than 40 million dollars into the project.
And it's now seeking 211 million more.
But wait there's more.
Because Port O' Call is now out of business, that means the city, county and state no longer get its considerable tax money.
Port O' Call's owner tells ABC 4 that his business used to pay more than $300,000 in annual local taxes - money that is sorely needed in these tough times.
And that doesn't take into account the taxes the employees paid, nor the revenue from the monies they continued to cycle through the Utah economy.
-Bob
5 comments:
First the hole in Sugarhouse and now this? Do the yahoos in SLC know how to run a city or do they just like to make symbolic and largely meaningless gestures towards pet causes? Sounds like the council needs to attend Zoning 101.
actually, this is a federal thing. i think the council is fairly powerless on this one.
I have a hard time believing that a city council has to just roll over when the feds buy a piece of land. I also wonder why the city wasn't included in the construction process given the impact or why they didn't get higher elected officials involved. After the fiasco in Sugarhouse, it's hard to give them a pass when basically the same thing happens all over again.
short of chaining themselves to Port O'Call, I don't think that they could do anything. Federal projects trump local government desires.
And, I heard about this project in 2005, and I know some parts of it have been going on much longer than that, probably to Rocky's first term.
The Federal Courthouse really does need expanding. Port O'Call is the real villian here. They held out and sued over the price they got from the Feds when the government took their property to expand the courthouse to take up the entire block. That and moving the Oddfellow building wasn't cheep either. On the list of things to blame Orrin for, this shouldn't be one of them.
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