Boston Globe magazine ran an interesting piece Sunday detailing a potential clash of the titans in Nantucket.
Seems the "high-end homogenization" (to steal a phrase from Mary Eaton) of Nantucket by local noble Steve Karp has elicited a response from rest of the island's Summer elite, particuarly one Wendy Schmidt, wife of Google co-founder Eric Schmidt.
The debutante-do gooders have formed charitable trusts to help preserve some of the properties in businesses in town, including the locally owned bookstore that had been the genesis of the chain store ban instituted on the island. (I think it's the same store. I couldn't find the article that ran in the Daily News last December.)
It's an interesting dynamic. Essentially, the wealthy who have made their homes (or one of their homes) on island feel a sense of responsibility for driving up the cost of living on the island. Indirectly, they also could be held at least partly responsible for the downtown's tilt toward offering higher end (i.e. expensive) products that don't do the townies any good.
I applaud these people for accepting a level of responsibility and taking action. No doubt, some good will come from it. But the results clearly are mixed:
LAST YEAR, SCHMIDT MADE her first foray into downtown revitalization by purchasing the former Island Spirits lot on Washington Street, a piece of land near the waterfront, for $3.5 million. She offered it to the town, for $1 a season, to use as the site of a new hub for the Nantucket Regional Transportation Authority. (The town had asked voters to fund the purchase, but they refused in a September 2007 special election.) It is a project that, she says, plays into her desire to get people out of cars and into environmentally friendly public transportation and ease the congestion that is making downtown increasingly inaccessible.
As some people quoted in the article point out, can a well-heeled group of philanthropists really use their considerable means to maintain a sustainable, natural existence for the rest of their town. Or do their very efforts make the job of preserving the downtown even more difficult because locals come to expect help from their richer neighbors?
Interesting questions. Worth a read.
4 comments:
Debutante-do gooders. I like that!
Interesting, Tom. I think most of the unwashed (I'm including myself in this), whether they realize it or not, relies on philanthropy to some extent.
The Essex Co. Community Foundation, for example, funds all kinds of preservation initiatives in the county. I don't know if people expect them to keep it up, but it is their mission to do so.
Can you tell I just wrote a story about ECCF?
is there anyway you could provide a link to the film the still is from. The part were Kong gets "recharged" from the electrical power lines still chocks me up.
and that Godzilla , is there any role he can't make his own.
Puhleeze, why would a gorilla be energized by electricity? So ridiculous.
Godzilla would have kicked Kong's ass in real life.
Stupid focus groups. They don't let the artists BE the artists.
You may not know this Thomas, but a sequel was planned were Kong and Godzilla team up to stop a Chinese crime sindicate in Rowley, and it was to be filmed in Newburyport, unfortunatly no one could find the location due to a lack of A frame signs.
Post a Comment