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Sep
5
Joco’s dirty money hits home
September 5, 2006 | 11 Comments
Suburban leaders are shocked (shocked!) to discover that they can’t run from the big bad city forever and parts of it sometimes follow their flight. The Star reports that pay day loan stores are moving to the suburbs.
“Those are the kinds of stores that you see in parts of town you don’t want to live in,” said Lori Olson of Overland Park, a suburb recently ranked by Money magazine as the sixth-best place to live.
“I don’t believe it’s the type of development that we want to see in Overland Park,” said City Councilman Terry Goodman. “It portrays an image of an area in decline.”
Perhaps these folks haven’t been north of I-435 lately. The northern part of Metcalf Ave. is already taking on that dreary look of a suburb in decline like you see on Bannister Road or Noland Road. Probably the most ironic part of this story is that one of the country’s biggest payday lenders is based in Corporate Woods. Overland Park is happy to host these vermin’s headquarters, just not their actually dirty business.
Our region has been struggling with payday lenders for years, but appareantly most folks don’t care until touches their own subdivision.
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I’m glad someone finally noticed that nothern OP is going down the tubes. The city doesn’t give a shit, all they want to do is build strip malls further and further south. Most people in OP don’t even know the city goes north of College Boulevard.
Nice post.
I have noticed these awful places multiplying like rabbits for the last few years, and yes, north JoCo is starting to look like CRAP.
Instead of trying to persuade someone to build another unecessary strip mall out at 250th street (okay, it’s actually more like 150th…) why not invest in old parts of the burbs before they get REALLY bad and stop the idiotic urban sprawl that leads to more long distance car driving?
Also, does it worry anyone that even though we are told that the country is great economic shape (i.e. record corporate profits) that even supposed high income areas like JoCo are becoming filled with pawn shops and check cashing places?
The answer is sad but simple -
The rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer.
Hmmm … perhaps all is not well in Cupcakeland. These businesses wouldn’t be setting up shop if there weren’t a demand for their services.
Funny how reality intrudes upon the feeble fantasy JoCoers set up.
Feeble fantasy? What fantasy is that? Please explain.
The only fantasy that I can think of is the one where the middle class JoCo religous conservatives keeping voting with Republicans to keep them safe from gay people, while those same politicians keep raising the cost of living and making the rich richer and eroding the middle class.
Also, perhaps the words “filled with” is somewhat misleading to some, but I know of at least 4 check cashing places that aren’t far from my Shawnee home that are fairly new. Perhaps other areas of the metro area have a lot more? If so, that’s very sad.
If you look back, my ORIGINAL comment was about North Johnson County – NOT just Overland Park.
My point was that there are many more of these places than there used to be.
The “feeble fantasy” is that with the right amount of money and an affluent population you can keep the poor, minorities, crime, asphalt shingles and yard signs in KCMO or WyCo. That is the original appeal of suburbs just about everywhere. The fact is that as most inner-city suburbs grow older the population gets a little less well-to-do and a little bit more diverse. That’s hardly a bad thing.
Many parts of Johnson county are in the pits. Johnson Drive, 63rd, 75th, Metcalf, Nieman, Quivira, all dotted with crumbling streets and empty buildings. Ghost strip malls, if you will.
It seems the only thriving parts of these streets are those with big box stores and chain stores. Much of these empty strip malls used to have more small businesses. We need to support the family at the hardware store at Nieman and Johnson drive, the great people at needmorediscs and others like them. If we put money back into our community in north JoCo, it may actually be looked at a bit different than the southern part of the county.
So all the sudden this is turned into a rich vs poor thing. Total disregard for the fact that these places are making the poor poorer. Sure I don’t want one is Lee’s Summit but its only because I personaly think they are stealing from the poor. They prey on people that need a few extra bucks just to pay bills. Comments here always jump to quickly into JoCo versus Midtown/Downtown folk.
“Those are the kinds of stores that you see in parts of town you don’t want to live in,” said Lori Olson of Overland Park…
What amazes me about this quote is the possible assumption behind it–that there are people in the city who want to live in a neighborhood full of Payday Loan shops. Astounding!
This kind of thing leads people to stereotype OP denizens as being somewhat racist, if not xenophobic and ignorant. But I think that would be too harsh a judgement. Suffice it to say that poor people don’t like the slums any more than the rich.
KCMO guy,
It kind of reminds me of people who have a crime or terrible accident happen in their neighborhood and then they are interviewed and say, “I never thought something like that would ever happen HERE!”
As if their neighborhood is immune to the realities of life.