urbie
-
Posts
240 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Gallery
Project Database
User Guide
Store
Events
Posts posted by urbie
-
-
it's required by CVS. i don't know why. that's really the dumbest thing. like i've said before, i have never been to a CVS and seen the parking lot full (except the one on admiral st, which i think shares the lot with the place next door, which is i think a car stereo/alarm place and atomic salon). and i've never seen anyone use the drive thru at a pharmacy. even the busy world's largest CVS in wakefield doesn't fill their lot in the summer. 73 spaces is overkill.
The one on Hope St. was pretty close to full when I walked by yesterday -- they don't have a drive-through, however.
Urb
-
i've never seen a CVS require 73 spaces, not even the behemoth in wakefield. and a DOUBLE DRIVE THRU?!?! i've never seen anyone use pharmacy drive thru's before. i can understand (sort of) the one on mineral spring, but not a CVS. there's no way they'll have a need for that.
My favorite were the drive-thru liquor stores in Arizona, on the way out to the Rez....
Urb
-
I live in one of these and am happy to share my experiences on this.
[snip]
Since there are a limited amount of people, the condo association can work more easily, or harder. In a condo complex with hundreds of units, it is easy to fade into the background and let the association take care of things. When you only have three or four units, with a max of 6 or 8 people, this is much harder to do. Everyone needs to be involved in the decisions that affect the house. Again a good or bad thing depending on the person.
-
I hate the term 'people of color' it really grinds my gears. It somehow implies that there are people who lack color (?).
-
The problem here is that the funding is already allocated for rail development, so it is a question of whether Pawtucket gets a portion of it, or if that money goes somehwere else in the state of the country. It's not like not building this is going to get GWB to send you a check for 35 cents.
Well, no -- I'm not asking for a check from GWB. He sent us one for $600 a few years ago -- it was not enough to buy our vote.
Basically, I'm just being cranky here -- but to take up the point you're making, if the money has already been allocated for rail, then spending the $100 million (or whatever the real cost would be; probably higher) on this station just means that there's $100 million less to spend somewhere else, e.g., extending service further past Providence, adding more trains, maybe running trains to someplace like Worcester, or whatever else we can dream up.
Various articles at the beginning of this thread say that the last time a passenger train stopped at Pawtucket was either 1959, the late '70s, or some other date -- a long time ago in any case. If there is such a compelling need for this stop, spaced so closely in between Providence and S. Attleboro, then why was it not an issue until what's-his-name-binder decided he wanted to knock it down and do something else with the property?
When I take a train from here (east side), I take the 99 bus downtown, then walk over to the train station and pick it up there. From Pawtucket, you take the same bus, and it's an extra 10 minutes. Seriously, how many people are clamoring to commute from there to Boston but who are not doing it now because of the bus ride they'd have to take? (Probably some, but not many.) Also, the proposal described in the Times article mentions building parking lots -- but if people are going to drive to the station, they can drive an extra 10 minutes to S. Attleboro.
I just don't see the "rational arguments" in favor of adding a stop -- again, for only a few trains a day, and at such huge expense (meanwhile reducing the property tax base) -- so close between the stops we've already got. The non-rational argument is that the station is an attractive building (albeit a derelict one) that might be nice to save. Fair enough. OTOH, that's a matter of taste; one person's "Beaux Arts" is another's "white elephant." (Not mine, I'm just sayin'....)
Urb
-
i lost my network for a sec, and lost what i was typing, but yes, Jason, you are exactly the person the city council needs to hear from. You made the investment in Pawtucket, and will stay if you can easily commute to boston. You're the reasonable voice to the folks who want to tear it down for a crappy CVS.
i was mostly speaking earlier to folks who might come from other places and use their time to simply talk about the importance of historic preservation, which while INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT and is an economic development engine, is not what the neighbors are gonna want to hear if they have their heart set on "jobs, increased property values, convienience" and all that other crap folks trot out when they want something that basically is a bad idea.
good luck all. I wish i could be there. I'm all tingly just thinking about the confrontations tonite! I hope that scumbag developer shows up.
How accurate was the Pawtucket Times article (yesterday), which stated:
"David Wilcock of VHB said a T stop would call for two 800-foot-long platforms, which with attendant costs such as night work required to move existing catenaries would range from $25 million to $50 million; $30 million in railroad improvements subject to negotiation with Amtrak; $40-$55 million for capital costs; and $800,000 to $1 million in annual operating and maintenance costs. Incidental potential costs for real estate and relocations could add another $35 million, all to be paid half federal and the remainder from state, local or other resources."
Geezus -- that's saying it would cost a minimum of $95 million (of taxpayer funds, probably a combination of federal pork-barrel, state, and local) to reactivate the train station. For what? A couple of trains a day that would stop, in each direction?
Preservation is a nice objective, but if these cost figures are anywhere near accurate, it's ridiculous. I've been following the preservation fight (eventually lost to the developer) over the huge Danvers State Hospital building -- some local preservationists wanted to keep this 120-year-old building, which was one of the biggest buildings in the country and was falling down (as in, floors caved in and stuff).
You can't preserve every old building that looks nice. When the market is saying there's a better use for it, that's what should happen. Within reason (zoning, attempts made to prevent the new thing from being too much of a monstrosity, etc.)....
Urb
-
-
so jen... am i off the hook yet? it's snowing.
-
Monday
Partly cloudy. A chance of snow in the morning. Cold with highs in the upper 30s. Chance of snow 30 percent.
-
Summit/Mt. Hope/Oak Hill comes close. There are some (very virtuous) people who walk to Whole Foods. There's the Y on Hope St., the library, full-service CVS and East Side Pharmacy, auto mechanic, bakery, restaurants, banks, barber shops, etc. Sadly, though no hardware store since Rocky's Ace Hardware in Oak Hill left.
-
Hi! We're finally here! Stuff comes Monday -- And....
The lovely cool weather Rhode Island is about to experience is due to the fact that we've just bought an air conditioner
Meg
"Stuff" was supposed to come today, but -- moving companies being how they are -- it got bumped back to Monday. Fortunately, we brought as much stuff with us as can possibly be crammed into a Jeep Cherokee.
We're on the air thanks to a stray wireless signal from somewhere nearby...
Urb
-
I'm still awaiting the day when I hear that donuts and cake fight colon cancer or something, that'd be sweet.
Donuts -- in our household, they're known as "good carbs!"
Urb
-
i certainly understand what an LLC is and understand that by and large they are not evil, but in federal hill and other neighborhoods where 5 years ago or so you could by a three family for less than 100K, many of them were bought up, landlorded out, not fixed up and then sold (for cash) for double or triple the price to "other" LLCs which used the $ to leverage the buying of other houses, etc etc. Some of these folks were eventually busted--by the market--and were foreclosed upon. One of them was my neighbor who had houses all over the city, and never paid mortgage or taxes on them, never did any work on them, but collected rents for months before she started slowly losing them to foreclosure. Then, she started another LLC and started all over again. So over here, an LLC that buys up a lot of properties, and then defaults on them is not something to be trusted.
That sounds like banks making stupid loans they shouldn't have made. Hey, if someone wants to lend her more money than she's good for, is it her fault for taking them up on it?
But yeah, stuff like that certainly happens in volatile real-estate markets. The huge one, out here, was the Baptist Foundation of Arizona, which invested hundreds of millions of parishioners' dollars in real-estate that they thought would go nowhere but up -- and if it had, no one would have been the wiser. But the market started to go down, the foundation did all kinds of chicanery to cover it up, and eventually the whole thing came tumbling down. People lost their life's savings, etc., and eventually, the perps were tried and convicted:
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2003/0703/dept/d075003.htm
(The author is one of my accounting profs from NAU.)
If banks are still lending money to your neighbor, though, they are the ones at fault -- they're not doing their homework.
And you should buy the tax liens -- you can end up picking up property for a fraction of what it's worth....
Urb
-
an LLC protects and individual from being sued... instead the LLC gets sued. that way, the only assets that could be lost are those owned by the LLC, not the individual. my uncle has his cabinet making business that way for that reason, and i think urban planet is that way for taht reason (so that the owner of the domain doesn't get sued for wahtever reason).
Well, the LLC really only protects the owners from financial liability incurred by the LLC itself. And as a practical matter, that doesn't really do much -- because lenders are not going to make a loan to the LLC if they think it's a bad credit risk. They'll do it, but they will require the owners (or "members") to sign a personal guaranty, assuming liability for the loan. So in effect, it's the same as if you had borrowed money directly.
And no business organization -- not an LLC, S Corp, or even a C Corp -- protects the owner from being sued for negligence (or other things you get sued over). The domain owner of UP can claim to be immune from lawsuits based on, say, libelous statements posted on the board, but that is not going to hold up in court. If you do shoddy work, injure someone, etc., you can get sued for every penny you have, even if it was your LLC that was contracted to do the work.
Basically, I think "limited liability company" is a misnomer, because it really doesn't limit your liability unless your customers or clients let it. A lender isn't going to loan your LLC $100,000 without a personal guaranty, which renders the whole thing pointless. For our purposes, the LLC was convenient (back when we had actual consulting work) just because we could contract for "the company" to do work, and the client didn't care how much of it I did and how much Meg did, as long as the work got done. We'd bill them for so many hours, and it was just for "X hours of work done by whichever of us felt like doing it that day."
Urb
PS -- [edited to say] Those with sharp eyes may have noticed that one Ra
-
this is always an interesting read--i notice how many of the same names show up in the same neighborhoods...and how so many of the names are LLC real estate corporations....
Well, what's interesting about that? It would be more unexpected to see certain people buying properties all over town, than to see them owning several in the same neighborhood. Wouldn't it?
As for having an LLC, that's just a convenient way to do business. It's not a shady tax-evading, evil-capitalist deal at all. H3ll, Meg and I have an LLC, which we started in 1998 as a way for me to farm out some consulting work, back when I was getting more work than I could do. An LLC is a "pass-through" entity, meaning that for income tax purposes, it's exactly the same as an individual or a partnership doing business -- no difference, just makes it easier to keep track of things....
Urb
-
if i were to stay in the city after i have kids (which won't happen because of the fiancee who wants a decent yard and is tired of living in the city, although i will require that wherever we move have city-like features), i would send them to private school. that would be the case almost anywhere i end up. aside from barrington public schools, almost all the public schools systems are not as good as private schools. the reason being that class sizes are much smaller in private schools and generally teachers just care more (you have to in order to accept the much lower salary).
that being said... my neighborhood is a mix of elderly who do their part (you should see the yards in my neighborhood, these people put a lot of time into them and are proud of them) and younger families (most with children who are no older than 10). there are a few families with high school aged kids (the one across the street from me for example, i think their kids go to la salle, although they never walk to school and it's right down the street, so it might be elsewhere). i'd say no more than 40% of the homes in my neighborhood are owned by elderly people. and my neighborhood is very clean, very quiet, and looks really nice. it's almost suburban living in the city aside from the fact that it's still fairly walkable with decent amenities within half a mile.
I'm shoveling against the tide on this, but I think schools are the most overrated concept in American life.
I went to one of the "best" public school systems in Mass., that being Wayland -- out of my high school class, 98% went to college, and we had more top scores on AP exams than any other school in the state, public or private, or some such thing, yada-yada-yada -- but did I get a good education? No. The English curriculum stunk -- they didn't have us read a single classic work of literature, in 12 years. The math department was reasonably OK, but they graduated football players who could not keep a bowling scoresheet. They did have a good foreign language department -- but they didn't require you to take anything there. Basically, there were a lot of good academic offerings, IF you wanted to take them. But if you just wanted to skate through school and get the h3ll out of there, you could do it easily and take cake electives your last two years.
By contrast, I used to work for a guy who'd grown up in Gardner -- one of the poorest towns in the state, in terms of education spending. As a result, they had very little money to spend on new books -- so the kids read old ones, like Shakespeare, Dickens, and Hemingway. Required.
I do not understand why parents obsess about their kids' schools and happily pay ridiculous property taxes in manicured-lawn suburbs (like the one I grew up in), etc. What you learn at home is MUCH more important than what you learn in school -- schools are basically a place to grow up and get socialized. And the suburbs are a lousy place to do that -- all you get is a bunch of identical white kids just like you.
And you don't even develop a decent regional accent -- most people think I'm from the Midwest, because my accent is so bland/vanilla, unlike my dad, who sounds like a working-class guy from Newburyport.
Why the obsession with schools? That ain't what it's all about.
Urb
-
Would you just come back east already!?
Hey, at least we've already got a Dunkin' Donuts card!
Urb
-
the T has shared parking in a few places. It used to be that you could get away with not paying for the T parking. This stopped about two years ago in S. Attleboro and has been stopping in other areas as well. I am guessing that the T used to subsidize these people but stopped doing so. Now all the places consider any piece of real estate that isn't expressly owned by the T to be a battleground. For instance, if you take the red line into Boston from Quincy Adams, there is a garage which gets full most work days. Right next to the garage is a 600 space parking lot with a Home Depot. You used to be able to park here as an overflow lot. Now, they have video cameras everywhere and if you leave your car there it is towed inside of an hour, even though the Home Depot uses about 20% of the lot. I asked about this and was basically told that the T's lease on the extra spots ran out and they refused to renew it so Home Depot just decided to get all pissy. Of course, the people hurt the most are the consumer and it means that dozens of people everyday now end up driving into work instead of taking the T since they can't park their car anymore, and there is a huge sea of parking that goes completely unutilized.
Hmmm... So that means the cost of commuting into Boston is ~$200/month for the T pass, plus $3 a day to park... $260/month or so?
Urb
-
there have been bocce courts up here since time began.
How about rental housing with parking spaces? Meg assumes I'm selling my truck, but I'm not so sure about that....
Urb
-
Federal Hill, baby. you can get a big apartment (a condo even!) for less than $1500 and you can walk to Jessie's or Cafe Dolce Vita or which ever one where you got the gelato.
I've seen some tasty apts on craigslist lately for Fed Hill.
Did they end up building those bocce courts I was reading about awhile back?
Urb
-
Have fun! But let me put in a plug for wearing GOOD protective gear -- not just whatever is required by law. A scooter is a real motor vehicle, and if you haven't already, you should invest in a Snell-approved motorcycle helmet and a motorcycle-grade leather jacket (not fashion leather -- that's much too thin), and a sturdy pair of gloves. That is the very least you should wear when riding -- ALL the time. If you ever hit the pavement, you'll be glad you had the gear! (Just ask my wife: http://www.kafalas.com/lblbrp.htm -- scroll down to "Fall in... to... the... Gap." With good protective gear, you can often bounce right back from a spill -- without it, you're in the hospital.)
A good helmet will run you $150-200 or so, and a jacket suitable for hitting the pavement will cost, probably, $3-500. Not cheap -- but you only need to fall once, and it'll be the bargain of a lifetime.
Urb
-
yes, it can be paid online for a $3.00 fee (screw you Municipal Court, I'm not fallin for that sham...).
I almost wrote my check out for $14.61 just to spite the city and recoup my loss for the stamp I wasted on mailing the first ticket....
Heh... calls to mind the time I paid a Boston parking ticket with ten separate checks, in varying amounts including one for $0.00.
The city sent them back, saying, "We only accept checks in even dollar amounts (no cents)."
So I wrote ten more checks, for varying amounts (including one for $0.00), but using even-dollar amounts this time. They accepted the payment. (I think the ticket was for $20.00 or so -- this was about 20 years ago.)
I figured, at least I got back at the man by increasing his processing costs a little....
Urb
-
Overrated, Overpriced, and not really a good area...Beautiful homes if you like living in a bubble ! Cranston Street has neighborhood services if you like living on the edge!! ( drugs , crime, neglect ) The area establishments cater to mostly Hispanics and Asians..If you have a car, you may not mind. On the other hand, Elmhurst is the same way with scattered neighborhood merchants. You really can't walk to the store unless you live close to one of the clustered blocks..However, the area is probably one of the best areas in the city other than the East Side neighborhoods...and the price is a lot cheaper!!
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Brings back memories of Jamaica Plain -- at least the drugs, crime, and neglect.
I lived there for about a year and a half, and I think my apartment was broken into a few weeks after I left. They had the occasional drive-by, too....Urb
-
Well, I can tell you that one of my friends is looking for a 2/3BR single family house in Elmhurst, and is finding prices to be around $230k-$280k. That seems really inflated, but it is a nice quiet neighborhood. I haven't looked to see what other properties are going for.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Our whirlwind tour, with your real-estate guy, took us up Smith St., with sidetracks up Pinehurst, Tyndall, Elmhurst, Wyndham, Fairoaks, Quincy, and Pleasant Valley (I was following the route with a highlighter on our street map, so we'd remember where we'd been). The houses in that area may seem inflated -- but considering what has happened to residential real estate just about everywhere you'd want to live, it's really not bad.
I think Plan A, at this point, will probably be someplace on the east side -- but Elmhurst, the Armory district, and parts of Federal Hill also merit consideration, especially depending on what the dinero situation does over the next year or so.
Is there anyone on the forum from the Armory area? What's it like to live there?
Urb
Oh the weather outside is...
in Coffee Milk Cafe
Posted