Times Picayune
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 10:58 pm by Karen and is filed under Commercial Development, PostK Development, PostKatrina NOLA, Walgreens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 15th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Let’s review:
Walgreens & Pivach/Perino sit on the leased property for more than 7 years. The property violates many ordinances and should have been sited for blight many times in the preKatrina years. But nothing happens. Walgreens has the lease and is allowed to blight the neighborhood. Pivach collects his lease money. And the corner is allowed to sit vacant and dead.
Then, immediately after Katrina, work begins on placing a Walgreens on the the same blighted block and in direct violation of the city’s zoning ordinances. Why? Did they think we were too busy recovering our homes and lives to bother and that they could slip one by us? Maybe. But no one accounted for, could not have possibily imagined, the strength of PostKatrina activism. So Walgreens “compromises”. Every time I hear this it makes my blood boil. Walgreens did NOT compromise!!!!! Walgreens was convinced by the power of the people to follow the rules!
Now, for sitting the property and blighting the block for years and trying to bully a recovering city, Walgreens gets our tax dollars. Someone please explain to me how this is just, right and ethical? Oh I get that the rules allow this. But that does not mean that it is just, right or ethical. Pragmatism can be dangerous to our long term ethical health. Something is wrong with the rules.