I was reading this article about how the destruction of the Minneapolis downtown would have to be repaired by turning all the office buildings into hipster artisanal breweries and drag-queen day care centers.
And I thought to myself, “Sure why not?” In fact, really the whole Summer of George Floyd/Winter of COVID thing was an enormous stroke of luck. All those small businesses that employed white supremacists from Old America were standing in the way of the future. Now those areas are available for the businesses of tomorrow. All kinds of entrepreneurs like human resource managers (pimps), pharmaceutical supply chain (MS-13) and retail redistribution (flash mob theft).
In fact they’re super-available. Whole business districts are emptied out. The telecommuting office workers are afraid to come back to the downtown because of rampaging gangs of looters and carjackers. So all the lunch shops and retail stores that depended on the foot traffic from these office workers have gone out of business and their owners and workers have joined the ranks of the urban poor.
“Using the mill district as a measure, the makeover of downtown will be a long, costly process. It took decades for developers to replace mills with a lively 24-hour neighborhood, and much of it was done during a period of low interest rates. Rates are now at a two-decade high.
The Minneapolis mayor said the city has no choice but to try. The central business district remains the city’s biggest concentration of jobs and real-estate investment, connected to the rest of the city with highways and light-rail lines.
“Downtowns are always going to be a centrifugal force,” he said. “What’s going to have to change is how we view it.””
Now this is the mayor who ordered the Minneapolis Police to stand down and allow the rioters to burn down the police precinct near the George Floyd martyrdom site. Based on his track record I don’t think I’ll hold my breath waiting for the Minneapolis downtown to revive.