Letter: Retail climate

To the editor:

You know, I can’t help but wonder whether or not we’d be in the position of needing new police facilities but not having a clear way to pay for them if we as a community would be more open to retail growth. The growing interest that Lawrence is attracting from national retailers in both the South Iowa and northwest areas of town are encouraging to me, but what if we stopped trying to tell retailers where to go, and allow them to go where it makes the most sense? The most sense for shoppers, the most sense for the retailers, the most sense for our community.

Continuing to push retail where retail does not want to be yields two results: 1) no retail growth or 2) bad retail growth.

Retailers such as Menards, Sam’s Club, and other big names will bring millions of dollars in retail sales to our community.  They will pay property taxes and collect sales taxes, which is a benefit to our community. It helps pay for updates sewers, roads, parks and services and could have helped to pay for the police facility.

I certainly hope that we as a community will help send the message to the world that Lawrence, Kansas is open for business.