"The beast is yet to come and won't that be fine"
Monday,November 29, 2007 The City of Ithaca today announced that it had issued a permit to the Mall of America Corporation to build a 700,000 sq. ft. multi-level shopping mall on public land near Buttermilk Falls. When built, the mall, tentatively dubbed MOA2, will be the 12th largest shopping complex in the US.
Despite intense criticism from environmentalists who argue that more retail will 'seal the fate of Buttermilk forever', Mayor Peterson has repeatedly clung to a more optimistic scenario. "This will really put Ithaca on the map. A couple of thousand tourists, if we're lucky, show up to see the Falls every year. This project will draw close to a million shoppers a year from all parts of upstate New York. These are people who want a shopping experience you can't even get in large cities like Syracuse. This mall will have the second biggest Bed Bath and Beyond in the country!"
Hours after the City issued its press release, a videotaped message from a radical environmental group calling themselves The Red Bud Woods Underground threatened to stop the construction of a new mall using any means available. A RBWU spokesperson,seen in the tape wearing a ski mask and a backpack that appeared to be wired to a detonator, promised to turn City Hall into a parking lot if "one more Victoria's Secret goes up in Ithaca."
The environmental movement in Ithaca suffered a setback two years ago when Cornell University went forward with a controversial parking lot project despite a storm of community protest. Local activists, who at one point could be depended on to chain themselves to bulldozers in efforts to impede development projects, have been largely silent in recent years as a spate of big box stores have popped up along the Rt 13 corridor. In a chilling rebuke to more timid colleagues in the ecology movement, the RBWU spokesperson pointed out in his taped remarks,
"People who call themselves environmentalists are often the ones who will make any excuse to visit the mall. You see them there all the time, popping into Payless or Target. If you'd rather buy souvenirs of Mother Earth at the Nature Company than preserve nature where it is, you deserve to be compost."
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 9:56 PM
