Good morning,
It came as no surprise that the second public update meeting on the redevelopment of the Boxwood GM site produced concerns over traffic, noise, pollution and related issues.
After all, Route 141, the highway that runs by the plant, has seen its share of problems in the past couple of years. The culprit – aging roads and bridges, growing peak period traffic volumes and a shameful neglect of infrastructure that has taken place nationwide.
The world around Boxwood has also changed.
The glory days when a busy and noisy plant cranked out hundreds of thousands of cars a year are becoming a distant memory. After all, the site limped along for several years with a fraction of its former workforce before finally closing its doors.
In other words, neighborhoods have gotten used to a quiet GM plant, with many residents moving in after the plant closed.
You can add railroad giant CSX to the mix. CSX operates a yard next to the plant and a couple of people at the session complained about its lack of responsiveness to community issues.
In decades of being around local government and businesses, I have learned that railroads are inflexible entities that are surrounded by a favorable body of laws and armies of lawyers. Of late, security concerns and tank cars with fracked crude oil make discussions of schedules and blocked crossings largely off limits.
It adds to the challenges facing Harvey Hanna in developing the property. Some pushback was expected and Harvey Hanna deserves praise for holdings meetings and allowing concerns to be aired.
One thing critics may want to keep in mind is that housing prices around the site have remained depressed, in part because of the presence of the vacant plant.
While a Boxwood with a distribution-logistics focus will be a busy place, it will also be a source of jobs. Some of those employees will opt for a short commute through home purchases in the area.
A final note: Our apologies for the moving GIF image in this space in yesterday’s edition.
It turned out the hamburger image did not behave correctly in some instances unless you decided to click the link to the web page. Funny, it worked in tests.
Enjoy this cloudy day and the lower air-conditioning bills. The newsletter returns tomorrow. – Doug Rainey, publisher.
