Reply to Palisades: Safeway is closing

Forum Index » Real Estate

Reply to "Palisades: Safeway is closing"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele]Mary Cheh and David Catania to the rescue:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mike-debonis/wp/2014/10/06/safeways-palisades-plans-at-issue-in-tuesday-d-c-council-vote/

They are introducing a bill on Tuesday to prohibit covenants forbidding grocery stores.

[/quote]

This is great, I hope it passes. Screw Safeway. [/quote]

Yes, PLEASE let it pass.  What a shitty thing to do to a neighborhood.  Why in the hell these are legal to begin with - creating restrictions on whomever buys the property from you - is incomprehensible.[/quote]

This bill apparently passed today:

http://www.councilmembercatania.com/catania_emergency_legislation_to_preserve_grocery_store_services_in_the_district_unanimously_approved

[/quote]

Fantastic!  Thank you for posting!

[/quote]

Is it really fantastic? Do you really want the government telling you what you can and can't do with the property you own? It also seems unfair to me to basically make a law to target one business. Safeway tried to develop the property. The community fought them. Now they should be expected to facilitate their competition moving into the space they wanted to develop but couldn't. Seems quite unfair to me. 
And I imagine that Safeway has pretty good lawyers. They will figure out a way to make sure a grocery store doesn't end up on that property. 
If the people in the neighborhood are holding out for a Trader Joe's or a Whole Foods, they are going to be sorely disappointed. [/quote]

I don't think there's anything wrong with the new law; if Safeway doesn't want to risk competition then they can hold on to the property, close the store, and refuse to sell. That's within their rights, provided they pay the taxes and maintain the property sufficiently from falling into disrepair. But to divest and control the future development feels clearly anticompetitive to me. I agree singling out of grocery stores is particularly odd, but as far as the government telling you what you can and can't do with the property you own - first, they already do that through zoning laws (pretty sure I can't convert my house into a grocery store), and anyway, this is them telling you what you can't do with property you don't own.

I don't see how these covenants are anything but clearly anti competitive positioning, and measured with something like a herschmann herfindal index I could see a powerful argument emerging that the stores have signicant power.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics