More Field of Dreams or 'build it and they will come'

 A rendering of the proposed Arlington Downs project near Euclid Avenue and Rohlwing Road in Arlington Heights shows "a really neat campus," as one Arlington Heights trustee put it.

During the Arlington Heights Village Board meeting on November 16, 2015 Jeff Funcke of Funke Architects presented adjustments to their massive re-development project of Arlington Downs, near Rohlwing Road and Euclid Avenue in Arlington Heights. 

It will begin with the hotel portion next month and the retail buildings next spring. As Mr. Funcke responded to a Trustee's question regarding the type of retailer that would be attracted to their development, he said,

“Here's the thing, when retailers they see renderings, they do not see anything getting built out there, it is a a lot of talk, we are trying to adapt those buildings to the user and future retailers, once we start construction in early spring. The idea is that from what our broker is telling us, once we build these things, they will come”.

Mr. Funcke is proposing yet another supply-side strategy for the economic development of Arlington Heights. Strategies that increase the supply of retail space are considered supply-side, or trickle down stimulus, for local economic growth. According to those theories, once you get a business into town it will magically produce consumers who have money to spend thereby supporting that business, or more precisely 'build it and they will come'.

Trickle down, or supply side economic stimulus policies, have been discredited as a result of the Great Recession of 2008. That economic meltdown was caused by years of supply side policies. Nonetheless, the Village board continues to cling to these failed ideas to stimulate growth at the local level.

For example, programs the Village uses to subsidize businesses and increase supply are the Zero Interest Loan Program and Retail Small Business Incentive Programs. Another example of a supply-side strategy is the ongoing annual payment to the Metropolis Theater which was purchased to bail out politically-connected developer Mark Anderson in 2004.

Other examples include the Village's willingness to rewrite the Cook County ordinance against puppy mills solely to keep Happiness is Pets in business. Then, of course, there are Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) districts, which are a direct payment to the developer crowd at the expense of community taxing bodies such as schools, libraries and the park district.