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This is ridiculous

March 19th, 2010 at 06:33 pm

I live in a small town about 20 miles outside of a big town. Right next to me are two other small towns, thus the name tri-lakes for our 3 towns. Each town has approximately 8000 people. When I first moved here in 2001 we had a branch library and a King Soopers and Safeway for groceries. For fast food we had Arby's, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Subway and Burger King. The Burger King has since closed. For chain restaraunts there was Rosie's Diner and Village Inn. There was one pizza place and 2 liquor stores and about 10 banks.

Since then we've had an explosion of building. Three or four years ago we got a Chili's. That was a big deal because now there was a new place to go out to eat. Then we got a Super Walmart. That was terrific since it meant we didn't have to drive all the way in town to purchase small household items.

After that we quickly got a Kohl's, Staples, PetSmart and a Texas RoadHouse. Our favorite restaraunt. And finally about 2 years ago we got a Walgreens and my bank opened a branch here. Finally everything I needed and no need to go in town. Everything is within 5 miles of each other.

However now it's getting ridiculous. For some reason Walgreens decided to open another store 4 miles from the first one. How ridiculous. Today is their grand opening and it's snowing. We're supposed to get 15 inches by tomorrow.

Now we have 2 McDonalds, 3 Subways, 2 Walgreens, 4 liquor stores, 4 pizza places, and at least 20 banks. Why do we need so many of the same things so close together? We also have had multiple restaraunts open and close in the last 3 years. There's not enough population to sustain that much eating out. It must be the same people who keep building the new houses behind me when there are already almost 20 for sale and have been for over a year.

Ah well, maybe the Walgreens will have some good grand opening sales.

I finished reading the library book The Scarpetta Factor by Patricia Cornwell. Mystery - very good.

3 Responses to “This is ridiculous”

  1. Jerry Says:
    1269048503

    This development leads me to think of one of my favorite quotes... "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell." I can't recall who said it, but it's true. It there is no insurance that the area can sustain these businesses, then what are they doing putting them in? Crazy.
    Jerry

  2. baselle Says:
    1269061686

    It is ridiculous when you note that all developers chase the same population - the rich. You are talking about 3 towns/8,000 people each. How many of those 24,000 people make $100K+ that the developer craves to sell to? Only the developer probably. Oh, I'm not making it for you all, he thinks, my buyers will move to this little piece of heaven ... sure thing, bud, after you've destroyed it.

    I'm cranky on a Friday night.

  3. retire@50 Says:
    1269109108

    baselle - lol The thing is this is a rural area so there are million dollar houses mixed in with 100K houses - overall the average salary is fairly high, but there's only so many jobs in the area for people with salaries that high and most of them aren't going to move every year to buy the latest and greatest. It's so ridiculous, they are building a new neighborhood of 500K homes right next to my $180K townhomes - why? And they have built about 30 homes and 10 are still unsold after more than a year but they keep building about 1 new one a month. I don't get it.

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