Quote:
Originally Posted by Bogue
I agree w/ Alxx & nim. If you move downtown then you should expect a certain lifestyle. It's not the suburbs. There's noise & life. It comes with the territory. The last thing the city needs is more of these type people downtown sucking the life out of everything. What residential is in the area needs to be targetted more towards young professionals to increase the vitality of the area & needs to be limited in the LODA district to avoid this issue in the future.
Besides, while residential development downtown is great, it's far more important that businesses in the area be catered to. At the end of the day residential areas in any downtown urban area are a net loss for the city they're in compared to commercial & are really only beneficial to the extent that they use the businesses there. These people are clearly not the type of people who patronize most of the businesses downtown. Why shut down successful businesses and throw away jobs (in this economy, no less) just to make a small handful of boring codgers happy? They've got the option of moving to a nice quiet neighborhood in Midtown if they're unhappy living in the middle of the entertainment district that they CHOSE to live in. When they move out hopefully they're replaced by better people. Mobile has the best nightlife in the state and it's solely b/c it's so easily accessible. That should be built on, not destroyed. Having the nightlife primarily located in a single location makes it safer (easier to patrol & light) and condenses the impact of the noise. It also helps local artists by increasing the movement of people between the bars. I'm all for increasing the diversity of business types in the area, but that does not and should not require that any of the current ones be affected in any way. When talking about any downtown it should ALWAYS be commercial >>>>>> residential in the pecking order. It's infinitely more important for the future of this city that existing business be taken care of.
I don't see how this helps anyone but this very small number of extremely selfish people. It takes tax money from the city, removes patrons from downtown, makes downtown LESS livable for everyone else by removing entertainment options, limits our collective culture by over-restricting artistic expression.... What's next? These boorish prats going to throw a fit b/c their parking situation is screwed up during Mardi Gras thus requiring that the parades be moved out onto the Causeway? We may want people downtown... but not these kind of people. These people are the kind who want to see the folk who work in those bars put out of a job in the middle of an economic crisis. I'm completely disgusted by them.
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Wow Bogue, you sure know how to hurt a person’s feelings. I would like to give my opinion on this situation from my point of view. First, my father-in-law bought our building in 1970, when the Alabama Music Box next door was a furniture store (City Furniture). He and his wife ran an antique store from 1970 until 2002 (when he died). At that point my husband and I opened a Mardi Gras gift shop. To say that we don’t like Mardi Gras is laughable as this is the busiest time of the year for our shop. Our customers, both local and tourists, continually tell us how unique and special our shop is so we feel like we contribute greatly to downtown.
Second, we live in the middle of a 3 block area of Dauphin Street that is all business/residential. You can call it an entertainment district all day long but our area of Dauphin Street has evolved differently than other parts of Dauphin Street and that cannot be denied. Three other property owners on our block have also been here 30 years or more. There are 8 apartments/condos, 4 lawyers offices and our gift shop on just our one block. Also, 2 buildings on the other side of the bar are both under construction today for business on the ground floor and apartments on the second floor. The owner of one of them will be moving into his in a couple of months, making this block even more solidly business/residential. Plus, there will be an art gallery opening soon in a corner building on our block.
We don’t feel like we are “selfish” or “disgusting” or “boring codgers” just because we want to be able to sleep in our own home without bass noise coming through our walls into our home. We have put insulation in our bedroom windows and bought 2 white noise machines; I don’t know what else we can do.
I just want to end by saying that Mobile is over 300 years old and it has changed many times and will continue to change and I am just sorry that the politicians during this time have not made laws to keep up with these changes to stop problems like this before they begin.
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