The Palouse Knowledge Corridor Economic Summit yesterday was supported by Businesses & Residents for Economic Opportunity, the Greater Moscow Alliance, the Moscow Civic Association, and the Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development. However, it was made clear at the beginning that the focus would be on high-tech industry, not big-box or other retail development.
Despite this admonition, the topic of big-box stores kept coming up. Somewhat unexpectedly during his remarks, WSU President V. Lane Rawlins stated that he believed that Pullman needed a Wal-Mart Supercenter and he felt the debate in the community was good.
Later, an unknown commenter (I assume from Moscow) asked how the area could be trying to open the door to some national businesses (high-tech) while closing it to others (big-box retail). It will be interesting to see how this is reported in the Daily News today. I'm surprised that neither the Tribune nor the Evergreen covered this major story.
More on the summit later.
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2 comments:
I think the unknown commenter's point was that if an unknown company announced that it was planning to build a 225,000 square foot state of the art facility and would create 300 new jobs, increase city tax revenues by $750,000.00 and it's technology was to lower everyone's cost of living, the cheers would be deafening. But as soon as the words "retail" and "Wal-Mart" and "big-box" are hung on it, suddenly and irrationally, half the audience is dead set against it. Here we were at economic summit, discussing strategies to attract new businesses, all the while fighting off already interested retail businesses as if their dollars are somehow dirtier than high-tech industry dollars.
As always, April nailed it on the head!
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