Jewel O' The Valley

It didn't take very long for General Growth to declare bankruptcy...the owners owers of our proud, unfinished Jewel O' The Central Valley -- the Elk Grove Promenade Mall.

So our hulking half-done mall collects rats while the city and the defunct owners decide on what to do about it. I will await better reporting from the Elk Grove Citizen newspaper to clue me in to what our elected officials have to say about these developments.

Let me guess...I can think of a dozen ways our leaders will respond:

1) "While we're obviously disappointed,..."
2) "Elk Grove will prevail even under these tough..."
3) "Elk Grove will emerge a stronger and..."
4) "Revenue growth remains uncertain..."
5) "While this is a blow to our 'community'..."
6) "Our projections for tax growth remains..."
7) "While not our preferred course of action, today's filing..."
8) "We can find a silver lining from today's..."
9) "We anticipate no significant consequences from GGP's announcement that..."
10) "We're resolved to grow our city now more than...:
11) "While our community mourns, let's focus on the long term prospects for..."
12) "Our citizens will emerge more resilient and prosperous as a result of..."

If I had the personal capability to utter this shit on command I know I would be quite a bit more successful in life...successful in that the best orators and bullshitters are seemingly always elevated. These lines sound like they'd come from an Elk Grovian city council member, don't they? You can't raise enough cash to become elected without having some innate ability to goad others to give you that cash. This is how it works, how it has always worked, and I can accept this. It would not be too difficult, I'm sure, to follow Elk Grove city council election funding right back to GGP.

So a handful of white, middle aged, overweight board members in Chicago get to decide the economic fate of a hundred thousand residents in a "community" twenty five hundred miles away. I will wager my yearly salary and say that the "new" owners of the Elk Grove Promenade will most decidedly be non-local. Perhaps it will be taken over by a group of Bangladeshi investors. Perhaps some sort of consortium of Houston-area investors. Maybe an out of state bank, assigned as the guarantor. Maybe another, bigger mall operator (decidedly non-local). The thing is, it could never, never! be owned by the city, or people of the city. We decreed that local ownership is verboten.