Proposal to the City of Lower Burrell

Dear Mayor Kinosz,

            The purpose of this letter is to outline a solution to Lower Burrell’s current economic recession.  Over past years, Lower Burrell has experienced a decrease bot in economic activity and security, dually because of the economic recession of the entire

US and the Pittsburgh Mills Mall taking traveling consumers away from Lower Burrell.  In order to fix this economic problem, I have the following proposal;

1.      It is obvious that we need to attract business, but the question is how to.  Lower Burrell has a wealthier population in the Hillcrest Country Club estates, Indian Fields I and Indian Fields II that would be more than happy to spend the money on quality businesses in Lower Burrell.  We need to turn away from low class stores and make the city more attractive to upper scale stores by lessening the financial risk that these businesses would have to take to come here.  As far as I am concerned, there are ways to do this:

a.       Lower local business tax or lower local taxes so that people will have more money to spend.  This is not a permanent tax floor drop, but as the saying goes; “you have to spend money to make money”.

b.      Renovate, or destroy, the useless vacant Ward’s and JCPenny’s buildings.  They have been vacant for more than 10 years, and the property would be much more valuable as an empty lot than a condemned structure.

c.       Cut spending across the board and give incentives to new businesses that decide to come to Lower Burrell.  If we made our expenditures much leaner, we would potentially have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, to give these cash incentives.

You and I both know that the Pittsburgh Mills was a failed attempt at a mall.  It works, but it’s nowhere near where it was supposed to be (up to Ross Park standards).  If we invested carefully and intelligently there is no reason to why we would not be like Fox Chapel in 10 years.  We need to attract unique specialty stores, upper scale pubs and bars, both middle and upper class dining and major brands such as BestBuy.  K-mart and similar stores are promoting lower class citizens to move to Lower Burrell, thus hurting its economy.  If this happens any longer, the damage will be irreparable.

                                                                                               

                                                                                                            Sincerely,

                                                                                                                        Andrew Brown