Whole Foods no longer a rumor

[Bham1982]

Quite sane, in fact.

1. By your logic, the city should have imploded the Book-Cadillac, since that cost about $1 million per full-time-equivalent permanent job, correct?

A condo/hotel project isn't a job intensive use, and has a strong economic multiplier effect. A grocery store IS job intensive and doesn't have any regional economic multiplier effect.

2. Even accepting that your $56,000 figure is properly viewed as a subsidy solely to job creation [[as opposed to making up the gap from building on top of a brownfield), it's a small amount compared to what southern states pay for auto jobs at plants built on greenfields [[unskilled at about $14/hour). Their average subsidy was [[and likely still is) about $165,000 per job.

An auto plant is a HUGE economic multiplier. Those Southern states have profited handsomely from the massive number of growing and relocated suppliers and supporting businesses. In contrast, Whole Foods will not cause folks to eat more food, nor will it attract additional dollars to the region.

3. If you consider the city income taxes generated, even a small lift to property values, attraction of additional high-income people to an area with more "normal" retail, and increased throughput to local vendors, it is very easy to get $56,000 worth of value from each of those positions.

I would like to see this "very easy" economic calculation. Feel free to calculate this for us!

And I have never heard of someone who choose their home primarily based on proximity to a single grocery store. Even if they did, there would be zero net economic gain for the region.