Can Park Ridge ever become a “retail” or commercial mecca…or even a mini-mecca?

Yet another attempt at answering that question may be taking shape, as the Park Ridge City Council contemplates the creation of an Economic Development Advisory Task Force – made up of volunteers from the community – to develop ideas for enhancing the City’s economic base.  According to Deputy City Manager Julianna Maller, the City’s recent economic development efforts in cooperation with the Chamber of Commerce just haven’t gotten enough traction.

The history of economic development in Park Ridge over the past decade or so has been generally uninspiring. 

For several years prior to 2010, the City paid an in-house economic development director over $100,000 annually for the most modest of results.  And for several more years before that, the City provided most of the financing for something called the Economic Development Corporation (“EDC”) – a public/private partnership of local business people with a paid part-time executive director (realtor Sharon Curcio) that cost the City almost $80,000/yr until the EDC disbanded rather abruptly in 2004, shortly (and merely coincidentally?) after the City decided that the EDC’s members would be required to sign economic disclosure statements like every other public official and City committee/commission member.

While Alds. Joe Sweeney (1st) and Jim Smith (3rd) have voiced their preference for a paid economic development “professional,” Alds. Sal Raspanti (4th) and Dan Knight (5th) favor the volunteer task force concept.  The creation of such a task force, however, does not need Council approval, as it is legally within the discretion of Mayor Dave Schmidt. 

Having followed the activities of both the EDC and of the in-house development director, we didn’t see a whole lot of “production” by either.  As best as we can tell, neither of them were given (or established for themselves) any benchmarks for measuring their success or failure.  Without any performance standards, they mistook activity for achievement (to paraphrase a quote by the late, legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden) – a mistake that also seems to have been shared by the Chamber of Commerce.

That’s why an all-volunteer economic development task force is worth a try.  At the very least, the price is right: given recent history, we certainly can’t get any less than we previously paid for.

But we think the first “task” for any such task force – before it runs off hither and yon with every half-baked idea somebody thinks could/might improve economic development or retail (see, e.g., façade improvement program) – should be to think long and hard about whether Park Ridge realistically can become any sort of a retail or commercial destination for anybody besides its residents, at least without making significant changes to the character of the community.

Ten years ago we were told by a group of well-meaning but somewhat naïve volunteers on the Uptown Advisory Task Force (“UATF”), aided by some hired-gun consultants happy to tell the UATF and the City Administration anything they wanted to hear, that if we built new retail space with parking, the retailers and their customers would come.  So we did, with visions of Crate and Barrel, Barnes & Noble, the Gap, and Ann Taylor dancing in our heads.

Unfortunately, all we have to show for that effort so far is tens of millions of dollars of bonded debt…and $6 million or so of red ink, representing the tax dollars that have been pulled out of the City’s General Fund to pay the debt service on the City-owned parking garage and other Uptown Redevelopment improvements that the City has not otherwise been able to pay because that project hasn’t generated the revenues all its proponents fearlessly predicted.

But, hey, we’re still guardedly optimistic that if/when the country climbs out of this recession, that Uptown project might finally become a cash cow – assuming that what we were told by all those UATF folks, our public officials, and the hired-gun consultants back then wasn’t just a bunch of bull.

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