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Not if their company provides free food/beer.
by hendzen 10y ago
Not if their company provides free food/beer.
- compiler-guy 10y agoExactly. All the Google cafes more-or-less destroyed demand for the restaurants that used to exist around the old SGI headquarters. One could argue that the cafes do replace those businesses, just in a different form. And one would be right, but the tax situation works out differently, especially the sales tax situation.
- SwellJoe 10y agoIt's not just a tax problem. It also works out differently for the people who don't work at those tech companies. A downtown that houses mostly businesses that feed their employees will become less "porous" over time, and less amendable to people who live downtown vs. those who work downtown. A downtown without restaurants and bars and corner shops is not a downtown worth speaking of. I spent several years living in Houston, which, at the time, had among the least pleasant downtowns I'd ever seen, or have seen since. It was completely bereft of good food, small shops, etc. There was no reason to go downtown unless you worked there, and no way to live there, and it showed. At night, it was a total dead zone; the fourth largest city in the nation, and its downtown population at night approached zero.
- ng12 10y agoI have spent more money at The Patio than I would care to admit. The second I left my job downtown I never went back. I get the feeling the sentiment is more about "get off my lawn you pesky techies" than about actual economics.