Also from the Republic:
City officials are negotiating with a St. Louis-based company that wants to build a $22 million parking garage on the eastern edge of downtown.
The six-level structure would be on city-owned land on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, near Fifth and Van Buren streets.
What it says, reading between the lines, is this: Free land for a profit-making parking structure.
But wait. There more.
The garage would contain about 860 parking spaces, including two levels below ground, plus 18,400 square feet of medical office space and about 5,600 square feet of retail space.
It turns out it’s free land for a profit-making parking structure plus 24,000sf of profit-making commercial real estate.
The land will be untaxed, of course. It’s City-owned.
But here’s the cutest part of all:
The Transit Oriented Development zoning overlay would forbid this if it were being done on private land with private money.
The full triumph of corruption comes when uncorrupted commerce becomes impossible…
