I feel sorry for the man who jumped through all the hoops at city hall and lost his investment in the business. This is not unusual and the blame doesn't necessarily lie with the city. Although in this case it appears there was some blame. There are many unscrupulous property owners out there who own the buildings the "corner stores" pop up in. They are slum lords. They won't spend the money to do the improvements to their property that will allow people to run a business in the space. Many unsuspecting budding entrepreneurs (mostly 1st generation immigrants) have gotten tangled in the web of deceit and think they are going to be the one that operates the nice profitable little corner store. Some have plunked down way more than $25,000 to make improvements to a property they don't even own. Many to find out the property is in worse shape than they thought, needs more improvements than they can afford and end up in a situation where they can't make a profit and have to walk away to prevent losing even more money. I have seen that to be the case at the corner store building by my house more than once. There have been nearly a dozen store owners running the store by my house over the past 10 years.
This is a difficult issue for me. My neighborhood has many convenience stores. In the early 90's we too asked our council member to place a moratorium on opening new convenience stores in our neighborhood. There were too many of them. At the time I was working on this issue there were 14 in a 1 square mile area. You say "What's the problem with that?" The problem is that the profit margin from convenience stores is marginal at best. When the area is saturated with them it makes profit even more difficult. Add to that the tactics of unscrupulous property owners. What can and does happen in this situations is: * Cigarettes get sold to minors * beer gets sold to minors * drug paraphernalia is sold * EBT cards (food stamps back in the day) get accepted to purchase items that are not legal to purchase with these cards. Items like beer, cigarettes, and out right cash. * The prices marked on WIC (Women, Infants and Children) coupons are outrageous especially on formula that is the big cash cow for some of the unscrupulous store owners. I have seen a store owner write a $6.00+ price on WIC coupon for a pound of cheese that would have cost $1.69 at Rainbow. Imagine what they can make selling formula. In the early 90's convenience stores were advertising that they would give away free gifts of pop, jewelry and other things if the mother would use her WIC coupon to buy formula at their store. The county or city must have stopped the free gift action because they stopped advertising free gifts. Hennepin County is contracted to audit the use of EBT and WIC for our area. Audit of these purchases is random and it is evidently hard enough to get caught that some unscrupulous store owners feel comfortable doing it. * Some store owners here resorted to being a fencing mechanism for the local home burglars. Some sold stolen goods out of their stores. (There was a big sting in the mid- 90's. Two stores in my neighborhood were caught up in the sting) * The corner store by my house was running prostitutes out of the basement. How did I know that? My next door neighbor at that time was one of his prostitutes. They didn't get caught for that, they got caught for selling stolen goods. * Some sell outdated food and keep coolers at higher temperatures than is required by law. ( I turned the corner store by my house into the Dept. of Agriculture for this very thing) The owner at that time was buying food from Steve's Warehouse and selling it out of his store. Hennepin County fraud does monitor illegal use of the EBT cards and WIC coupons. If a store is caught, they lose their license to accept them. What generally happens then is the store owner transfers the business into his brother or cousins name, gets a new license under a new name and re-opens the business. Yes, Hennepin County prosecutes those they catch. I think some of the store owners caught up in the stolen goods ring in the 90's did some time in jail. So, the issue of "corner stores" isn't as cut and dried as one might think. Especially in inner-city neighborhoods. The moratorium on them is completely understandable. I applaud Barb Johnson for doing it. However, a moratorium is only good for one year and then it has to be reinstated. So, whoever the volunteers were over north that pushed Barb to do this remember you are going to have to do it again every year. Barb Lickness Whittier ===== "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
