To co-op a phrase frequently used by friends-in-high places, your MesaZona blogger is on A Fact-Find Mission. Apparently an 'information packet' was sent to a number of building owners On/Off Main Street with an offer to purchase their properties for $100 per square foot, setting a metric for cash-outs or buy-ins by a un-named investor or group of investors to scoop up a big chunk of real estate here.
That's the going price on-offer to essentially eliminate complications in haggling with hold-outs asking for higher prices and bargaining with multiple property owners to consolidate the ownership of multiple commercial properties in the hands of a few to control economic development the way they want. . . who's THE BIG SHARK in the murky downtown real estate pool looking to gobble-up competing interests with that sparkling pearly-white toothy smile?
It's a wonderful combination of business, politics, finance and government all wrapped-up in a game of Monopoly - where the religion is playing your strong-hand > money. This time around it's not taxpayer money - oh no let's not use that emotion-tinged term! - it's something of a semantic twist at legislative trickery they are calling 'Community Engagement Districts' or going by the acronyms GPLET or TIF. The prime person trying to move the bills through the State House in Phoenix is none other than millionaire Mesa resident, land owner and politician Bob Worley, seen in image to the left.
Does he have a declared - or undeclared - conflict of interest in these overlapping business, government, finance and political interests that drive his actions in elected office??? It's not easy trying to clear the fog on all the recent feel-good-about-me and what-I'm-doing-for-you Op-Ed and Opinion pieces happily published in East Valley mainstream media that are foisted onto the public written by politicians themselves to promote their own commonwealth or benefit friends-and-family connections - mostly under-the-radar or in-the-dark.
It's a game that gone on for far too long, but it's worked in the past for generations. The only difference now is it's full-tilt legislative trickery by a cohort of conservative Repubs holding onto office as legislators in the Arizona State House, as mayors of cities in the East Valley like Mesa and their "special-interest groups" ...let's leave it there for now. What's next?
Million$ in monie$ have been sitting-on-the-sidelines waiting to get-in-the-game by controlling the supply side of the real estate market. It's not a gamble if these 'highly-influential people' control the risk by passing legislation in the Arizona State House for 'developer tax incentives', called TIFs that's been moving through the legislative process that would underwrite and give financial incentives to private developers.
According to an article in the Phoenix Business Journal from September 2015, a group of mayors [image above] got together in public to push for this type of tax give-way TIF.
Mesa Mayor John Giles can be seen sitting back in a comfortable armchair second from the left. What's new in the game of legislative trickery is the use of the phrase COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT - something Giles has self-admittedly failed on in his website mesamayor.com and attempts to engage whatever he thinks community is on social media. Worsley is now hijacking it to propose 'Community Engagement Districts' - that issue is the subject of previous posts here on this MesaZona blog site.
QUESTION: Have about a dozen commercial property owners here in The New Urban Downtown Mesa recently agreed to sell their properties for about $100 per square foot to a buyer setting that price? Is this free market interference and collusion of some kind? ... or just a good deal whose time is now when all the parties are willing, ready and able?
Some cash-out. Some buy-in. Finance/Carry-back Finance?
Stay tuned and enjoy the ride
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