Meh, the city provides lots of incentives and subsidizes development in a lot of largely invisible ways. As has already been said, suburban development is already heavily subsidized. Why not level the playing field to encourage downtown development? Handing out 10K cheques looks bad. Handing out $5million to a developer to build a parkade somehow looks better. Both are subsidies aimed at encouraging development in a particular area. The free market has had decades to work its invisible magic on the Exchange. I think it's perfectly reasonable to prime the pump to get things moving a bit faster. Obviously, the public is not prepared to swallow the city doling out cheques. On the other hand, various tax incentives (i.e. TIF) might be more palatable downtown and would not require that the city borrow scads of money up front.
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Originally Posted by Andy6
Why? All this does is ensure that no one ever does anything in future except where there's a subsidy. Everyone (developer and buyer) will always be waiting for the next subsidy program. It's like a drug addiction. Who wants to be the sucker who pays full value for something when, if you just hold back, the city will panic and give you free money for doing something you would have done anyway.
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