City Plans Coincidence or Economic Suicide?

If you remember last year at this time Seacoast Drive was under construction which lasted throughout the entire summer and did a great deal of damage to the Seacoast economy.

So here we go again with the shutting down of Seacoast Drive again during the most important time of the tourist season.

The beginning of the season with the Memorial Day weekend.Here we are about to open the new hotel on Seacoast and you would think that we would want to make access to the new business easier. Not Imperial Beach.

Our Mayor and City council have decided to make one of the main entrances into the beach area a traffic disaster. Whose brilliant idea was it to transform two-lane access to the beach area into a one-lane catastrophe? When studing at Pepperdine University for my Masters of Business Administration I studied under well-known economists, marketing specialists and business instructors. One issue that they always pointed out was what to do to commit economic suicide for a city or a business.

They all agreed limiting access to any area was one of the best ways to kill business for any store or city.

Next was to have a lengthy construction project going on during your busiest times of the year. Closing down a main street at the same time two years in a row seems to qualify for the, "Bad Planning Award." 

Construction creates plenty of dust and health hazards. People who have breathing problems, especially during warm temperatures, are irritated even more when clouds of dust arise from the consistent flow of dust into the air. Noise from construction is another deterrent for those visiting the local area as people wish to have quiet surroundings to relax.

Construction does not offer any of these benefits. In fact they make matters worse. So I ask the Mayor and the City Council if it is their plan and desire to commit economic suicide for the Seacoast area of Imperial Beach? This will also hurt the Farmers Market again which is enjoyed by many. The city is making it hard to access the area, dusty and noisy right at the beginning of the busiest business time of the year.

Once we might excuse but two times in a row is not a coincidence.