Ephesians 4:25
Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
I guess this is what JC said about transparency, and it’s good. JC really was the Dale Carnegie of 2,000 years ago!
This brings us to the former historic gas station and pot shop corporate headquarters on 18th and Minnesota, you know, the location of really expensive groceries and a employee discriminatory sandwich shop and who can forget the vape shop turned Noem campaign headquarters or the low class windshield shop where workers yell at me like cavemen when I ride my bike thru the parking lot.
Tre has changed plans many times with historic designations, running out of investors and now with a street closure and redevelopment plan that includes an office building on a residential street. Huh?
Originally we were told the city was giving them an interest free deferred loan (doesn’t have to be paid back), which would be awful. I believe the Planning Commission did approve it but I get lost with the council, which I think approved it also. But then it was revealed that Tre paid for it themselves (FF: 1:41:00). So was the council aware of this? If so, when were they going to tell the public? How does an approval process happen then behind the scenes another arrangement is made? If a demo contract needs to be canceled, the council MUST approve that cancellation in a public meeting. There are many shady levels to this project including a city councilor intimately involved with the project (maybe financially) not recusing themself from the discussion, which is an ethics violation even if HE is NOT involved in the final vote.
This administration is playing fast and loose with the law, but hey, look at the leader of the party, 50 shades of orange.
Notice the closely parsed words, “those funds were never dispersed to the applicant”. To the applicant. My government bureaucrat bull sh!t detector is activated.
OK, but who paid for the demolition and how much was the cost of demolition?
Feb. 25 article (after the demolition had taken place) https://siouxfalls.business/tre-ministries-plans-next-steps-after-clearing-redevelopment-site-along-minnesota-avenue/
From the article (the loan still available at this date, in addition to the [apparently] City-funded demolition):
“The site demolition was funded with support from the city of Sioux Falls. The city has a $500,000 deferred loan at zero interest available to Tre Ministries that allowed the site to be prepped for construction.
‘Removing those dilapidated houses along the Dakota side was helpful to the neighborhood as a safety concern,’ said Logan Penfield, the city’s housing development manager. ‘We wanted to push up the demolition … and not wait the winter while they finalize their building plans.'”
The demolition loan was contingent on the Tre Ministry property being zoned MMU2 Midtown Mixed Use – Moderate Density District. When they recently scaled back the project and rezoned it back to commercial/live work, they became ineligible for the loan and had to fork over the money themselves.
Yes, it appears to be what happened but why wasn’t the council told the loan was rescinded? This is transparency 101. If a contract is cancelled the council has to be told that preferably in a public meeting or exec session.
That classic old Standard Oil gas station at 18th and Minnesota is gone. The East Wing is gone and being replaced with Ceausescuian ambitions. They tore down that perfect mid century insurance building at 22nd and Minnesota to make way for most likey what Wright would call a “glass box boys'” creation of banking proportions. They demolish homes in a historic park, like McKennan, so they can build grandeur homes there that are not historic at all to feed the appetites of the affluent (Is that anything like a Wright “influenced home?”). AND, this is all in the name of progress which is merely a lie, because these are the same people who took civics out of the classroom and now they show no respect for history, and would probably like to remove it from the classroom as well. AND why, you ask? Because history is facts and facts feed transparency, or are the tools of such a honest trade within a democratic society, but some, the affluent, are bothered by this so they destroy history to help destroy the thought of the accumulation of facts, and in so doing, destroy transparency which is the true innoculation against their devilish plans, indeed.