A change of seasons is in the air. Election season is over and the holiday season is under way. But all that festive music isn”™t going to lift everyone”™s spirits. The business community is in a dismal mood. And after talking with some business people recently it seems it”™s going to stay that way for a while.
Regardless of the industry, most business executives and other professionals were short on positive news. One real estate professional even remarked that he”™s been losing sleep since the elections.
Yet, we heard months ago the Great Recession was “officially” over. There are myriad indicators and technical data economists use to track this, but basically they said the economy hit bottom in June 2009 and started creeping back up over the summer.
The recovery is going to be slow and fragile. Private sector employment has not come back yet. Uncertainty remains ”“ and business people don”™t like uncertainty. Perhaps the dismal mood is warranted.
All the more reason to embrace new business ventures, investments and developments. Why, then, do we continue to see mounting evidence of an anti-business climate developing here? Over and over, we hear complaints from the business community about increasing regulatory burdens.
Case in point: Greenburgh. Up and down the Central Avenue corridor, tenants and landlords cite frustrating experiences with local officials.
“We planned to finish in two months,” new tenant Najib Alkaifee told reporter John Golden in a front page story this week. The deli owner, who invested $200,000 in new equipment and renovations, explained that inspection delays by the town forced him to postpone delivery of his perishable stock. “Now it”™s seven months. I finished everything. I just wait for them now.
“Sometimes you wait for nothing. You don”™t know what to do.”
His landlord, Michael V. Coratolo, commented: “This man”™s paying rent for several months in a space where he cannot make a dime. The bleeding has to stop.”
Similar stories were told to the Business Journal.
It”™s hard to believe, at a time when so many people are out of work and taxes are skyrocketing that something cannot be done to expedite the lengthy and by most accounts, grueling, regulatory processes.
Town Supervisor Paul Feiner is trying to find solutions and recently organized a round-table discussion attended by some 50 property owners, developers, brokers, tenants and town officials.
Feiner pointed to a need for the town to become more “business-friendly” to lure retail tenants on Central Avenue and boost its tax revenue.
“In this economy, we really don”™t have a choice,” Feiner said. “We have to be more business-friendly.”
Feiner gets credit for taking action. He gets it.
Officials cannot sit idly by while developments wither on the vine. If developers and other business people do their due-diligence then they deserve a more efficient process in which to see their projects through to completion.
Towns and cities in Westchester should be encouraging business people to invest in their communities, not run them out.
