Dayton tax dollars being donated to the rich

The Talbott Tower is owned by Allan Rinzler. He’s not exactly hurting for cash- he can afford to donate enough money to have a sports complex named after himself at Wright State. ^[1] The Talbott tower is one of the higher occupancy towers left in downtown- in fact, I remember Mr. Rinzler telling me it’s one of the only ones to not go into bankruptcy/foreclosure.

And this is probably one of the reasons why:

The corporate headquarters for YMCA of Greater Dayton is moving to an office building across the street in downtown Dayton.

The YMCA is finalizing a lease at the Talbott Tower for 9,000 square feet for its corporate headquarters. The organization’s headquarters are currently in an 8,000-square-foot space in the 111 W. 1st St. building across the street. The deal will keep the group’s 30 employees, with a total payroll of $1.25 million, in downtown. Those employees will continue to support downtown retailers, and pay Dayton income taxes.

“We were presented with a great opportunity and we’re excited to go over to the Talbott Tower,” said Dale Brunner, president and CEO. “We’re excited to sign it and stay part of the downtown area.”

The city of Dayton on Wednesday morning approved a $75,000 neighborhood grant to help the Talbott Tower fund about $150,000 worth of renovations in the new space, in order to keep the YMCA in downtown. That decision reflects the fact that nonprofits are now among the most dynamic office users in downtown, and the most sought after by office tower landlords looking to fill their vacancies.

Bob Grabringer, property manager for the tower, will act as the construction manager and will hire subcontractors with whom he already has a relationship.

Source: Dayton YMCA to move HQ into Talbott Tower – Dayton Business Journal ^[2]

That’s $75K of your money- enough to pay a cop or two for a year, or mow an awful lot of empty lots- or tear down a few abandoned homes. If you were the owner of the building across the street that the Y was moving away from- you could use that money to try to keep the Y in your building, but that’s not how it works in Dayton. We take care of those who take care of those who run for office.

This isn’t the first time Rinzler has been on the receiving end of a good taxpayer funded deal- he was one of the partners that owned the old Sears building downtown, along with the Feldmans (our former county administrators family), Mr. Sandy Mendelson, Mr. Jason Liff and Irvin Moskowitz all got a nice bit of action to make sure that the county could put a fountain on a tiny bit of that parcel. Bought for $200K and sold for over $8 million.

There are lots of other developers who have gotten support from the city- and still ended up in bankruptcy. Your tax dollars contributed to the Arcade, the Arcade Tower, the former CitFed, 5/3rd bank and now Premier Health Tower, all of which failed.

Don’t you wonder if all the money that’s been squandered on “economic development” had been spent on cleaning and repairing streets, safety forces, better schools, parks- and getting out of the way of developers- we might never have taken a dive. Or if we hadn’t raised our income tax over that of every other community- since it was collected from non-residents- who have now all voted with theit feet to the mecca of tax-free income (if you are a white collar employee only) at Austin Landing.

Tax dollars that are spent in pursuit of tax dollars are dollars a lot like a certain cartoon character who used to say, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today”- but, Tuesday never seems to come to Dayton.