When life makes you lemons, sell lemonade

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

By Jake Nichols

“Lemonade stand busted,” reads the headline. It happens all the time, only the city changes. Last summer, Philadelphia cops shut down a lemonade stand for lack of permits. And a 10-year-old was busted in New York City for selling lemonade in Riverside Park.

With understandable trepidation, Maureen Murphy from the JH Chamber of Commerce approached the Council for a permit to run a lemonade stand at the Stage Stop on the Square. The Chamber went to bat for the Castagnos, the stagecoach concessionaire, hoping to win approval for the nonprofit Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation.

At the age of four, Alexandra Scott told her parents she wanted to help other children with their cancer treatment costs by selling lemonade from a neighborhood stand. That was $30 million ago. The organization continues strong today, long after Scott’s death in 2004.

The effort is dear to Ryan Castagno’s son who received permission from the Town to set up an Alex Scott lemonade stand on August 13, 14 and 20. Be thirsty, Jackson.

Affordable housing bank
This columnist will have to be paid more if he is to be made to understand the complex world of high finance and the “banking of affordable housing credits.”
City Planner Jeff Noffsinger said staff was initially not in support of the unique way in which Zia Yasrobi was planning to mitigate the impact of his expansion of the Best Western on Scott Lane but was now willing to take a more neutral approach in order to let the Council figure out “credit banking,” which is technically not allowed under the Land Development Regulations.

Rather than build the required affordable housing for his expansion, Yasrobi was considering a fee-in-lieu until that bill came in at about $16,000. That’s when Yasrobi pulled the “credit card.”

Ten years ago, the construction of the Webster LaPlant Homestead Fifth Addition generated 34 ‘extra’ affordable housing credits – of which 18 have so far been used to house employees in Teton Village. The Town of Jackson has allowed only one developer to use these credits in town, permitting Rendezvous Bistro to purchase three in 2001.

Melissa Turley was the only Councilperson to admit to being confused by the whole process, wondering why Yasrobi was only now coming up with the scheme and worried about setting a precedent for larger developers who might find buying affordable housing credits was a lot better than building affordable housing. She voted no but the deal went down 3-1 with Greg Miles absent.

In other business
Seeking approval of a Final Development Plan on a 6,000-square-foot space at 152 E. Gill, Jim Anderson and his architect Larry Berlin got the go-ahead after some initial concern over an overhead power line.

Town staff was content with the affordable housing mitigation aspect that amounted to one of the five residential units of the project – a two-bedroom space at the southernmost end – being allocated for affordable housing. The project will also include 600 square feet of commercial space on the first floor that could be used for anything except a restaurant, said presenter Shawn Hill.

Staff asked the applicant to look into burying existing overhead power lines, but Lower Valley Energy preferred those lines remain above ground and outside any building as they were ‘feeder lines’ and would need to be accessed regularly for maintenance.

“Is it OK to run these high-powered lines 65 feet over these buildings?” worried Bob Lenz. Town Engineer Shawn O’Malley assured Lenz there were stringent regulations in place addressing the safety of the lines. He also said the Town looked into rerouting or burying them throughout the general area but found it to be too costly at this time.

Lenz also hedged on the exterior materials Berlin was thinking about using. “I don’t know what ground face block or split block looks like,” Lenz admitted. “I just don’t want something that sticks out like that tower on the Center for the Arts.” JHW


PERMALINK:
When life makes you lemons, sell lemonade | Planet JH News Article: Council Chronicles

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