TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Market decides what's needed, not critics

ADVERTISEMENT

By TOM JACKSON

Published: September 6, 2009

That didn't take long. No sooner did word hit the Web about the development order for Cypress Creek Town Center being reissued than the usual anonymous anti-market hand-wringers deposited their uninformed critiques deploring the latest turn of events.

Their complaints huddle under a single, tiny, meaningless umbrella: We don't need another shopping center.

Guess what: They may be right. And yet, what the plaintiffs fail to acknowledge is, in pursuit of maximizing opportunity, America's system of commerce allows and even encourages risk-taking.

Floridians, more than most - and Pasco County residents especially - should recognize the merits of the well-measured gamble. Especially when that roll of the dice is supported by industrial-strength financial support.

To be sure, we need look no farther than New Port Richey's stalled - failed? - Main Street Landing project to see what happens when eager ambition outstrips capitalization. But the example is not instructive here because Cypress Creek Town Center is not part of a public-private partnership. It does not fit into some grand scheme designed to revitalize a sagging portion of an established neighborhood, however worthwhile the project seemed at the time.

The planned development exists, instead, as a project designed to fulfill needs yet unimagined by unnamed naysayers skilled only at pecking out unsupportable conventional wisdom on their keyboards.

Reshaping the future

It seems reasonable, even likely, the Cleveland-based Richard E. Jacobs Group could recast its original vision. After all, two would-be charter tenants - Linens 'n Things and Circuit City - have ceased to exist since the Army Corps of Engineers issued its stop-work order 18 months ago.

Now the parcel on the south side of State Road 56 boasts a future Kohl's department store and a Super Target, neither of which was in the original mix. Do we really need another Super Target? Believe it: If the good folks from Minneapolis don't get a foot down at that major intersection, our friends from Bentonville, Ark., would.

But whatever eventually emerges, those rooting for a more vibrant, more convenient and, yes, even a more interesting central Pasco can gather encouragement from one incontrovertible fact: This isn't Jacobs' first rodeo.

Consider the company's other Florida project, Gulf Coast Town Center in Fort Myers, home to - among other things - a Bass Pro Shop, a brick oven pizza restaurant and a Borders books and music store. Still thinking Pasco doesn't "need" another mall? Still thinking every retail delight is satisfied by the existing offerings?

I mean, it's OK if you do. But don't spoil it for the probable tens of thousands open to new suggestions.

Grand possibilities

Financially speaking, so long as any failure of such an enterprise will not become the latest softened or absorbed by a taxpayer bailout, we really have little to carp about.

Indeed, we should delight in those who will be employed in the construction of the mall and its ancillary buildings. As for those who will establish and, with luck and a solid business plan, build livelihoods within the confines of the finished product - they'll demonstrate soon enough the folly of prematurely concluding what is and isn't needed.

Keyword: The Jax Files, for Tom Jackson's bonus musings.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT