By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY, SEPT., 17, 2014) — The Canton, Mass.-based Dunkin’ Donuts started out as a one-off in 1950, when Bill Rosenburg opened his shop in Quincy, Mass. Today, the company describes itself as “the world’s leading baked goods and coffee chain, serving more than 3 million customers per day.” It only seems as if 2 million of those live in Pittsfield.

Actually, the company is aggressively marketing its franchise and brand around the country and even internationally. For example, Dunkin only last week announced a recruitment campaign for franchises in Texas apart from the cities of Houston, San Antonio, and Austin, which have 27 of the fast-food stores. The company has a long-term national goal of 15,000 franchises. The company claims a 95% national brand recognition rate.

On its way to 15,000, the company wants to tear down for former St. Mary’s Church on Tyler Street and construct a Dunkin Donuts at that location. The Diocese of Springfield and Cafua Management, a City-based developer, are in talks for the purchase and sale of the church complex, which includes several buildings.  Community activists don’t like the idea and have started a protest.

Job 1: Getting that Parcel on the Tax Rolls

Cafua apparently has nixed the idea of “repurposing” the former church by installing the new shop there in a retrofit, despite the design flexibility DD notes on its website:

Dunkin’ Donuts’ new look includes four distinct restaurant design options for franchisees, each featuring variations in layout, color schemes, graphics, textures, furniture and/or lighting. The designs enhance the current restaurant appearance, environment and layout to serve people all day long. Unlike other quick-service restaurants, Dunkin’ Donuts allows franchisees to select individual elements from any of the four options, creating a restaurant design that reflects their personal tastes and preferences, and best serves their specific restaurant size and location.

Any reminders of In nomini patri et fili et spiritu sancti obviously don’t fit the plan. That has some Pittsfield residents riled.

THE EMPTY SUIT rallies the troops on St. Mary’s steps. The people look highly interested. (Photo by Ben Garver, The Berkshire Eagle)

It’s funny. The diocese closed the church because of falling attendance. The property sat vacant for six years (the school for 41 years). The 2.6 acres hasn’t been on the tax roles since the mid-50s. For the most recent generation, the city has passed a series of excessive budgets despite a  shrinking population and diminished services. To keep this poisonous mix going in the face of a shrinking tax-base, taxes have risen to ruinous proportions — the highest in the state when you calculate all of the factors, including the demographics and the % of discretionary income. The city  did this with the complicit silence of many of the DD protesters, who over those years didn’t attend meetings, didn’t put pressure on city leaders, and did’t vote in elections. It let The Suits do whatever was in their best interests, not We The People‘s. Now comes a pointless protest that may as well speak into pastel ears made of cotton candy.

Have a company purchase a parcel up for sale with its own money, with the guarantee of much-needed tax-revenue, and you’d think we were watching Ray Rice enter the elevator all over again. The protests, as well meaning as they are, come many dollars short and many years too late. The leader of the protest, Darcie Sosa, admits Cafua Management “has the right to buy it.”

Done deal. Or is this not America? Better phrased, “Or does Pittsfield not run on Dunkin Donuts?”

Arguments of Protesters Don’t Add Up

Arguments against:

Aesthetics: St. Mary’s is “a beautiful church,” Sosa says. Wrong. It is no longer a church, the diocese having decommissioned the site. Is it beautiful. The shell may have aesthetic virtue, but it’s only a matter of time before that, too, fades from lack of upkeep.

Vehicular Traffic: Sosa and Ward 2 councilor Kevin Morandi object to the nature of the business, which attracts cars and vehicles and the people in them. That argument might have had merit in the 1940s, before the ugly and random development of Tyler Street as a Frankensteinian amalgamation of commercial and residential use. One more store will not add proportionately to the already heavily-traveled Tyler Street.

The Walking Loop: My Right Honorable Good Friend Morandi referenced the launch of a recent walking loop in the area, but folks will be as free to walk there after Cafua builds its Donut Shop there as they are today. Exercise and donuts eating may make an odd combination, but people who want to walk will walk. Those who don’t will choose not to. Those who wish to eat donuts will not cop out. Actually, donuts make up about 20% of DD sales.

The “Donutification” of Pittsfield: That battle, too, has been long lost. City leaders and an apathetic public decided that the future would be fast-food, tanning salons, nail-manicures, bar-rooms, and other venues for low-pay, low-benefit jobs. Now the city is stuck with that fatal (and fatalistic) decision to pursue a service-based economy. If there’s a market for another donut shop, more power to it.

Say ‘Yes’ to Commercial Tax Revenue is City’s Best Option

That fateful decision to settle for a “recreation and resort” economy, coupled with the present Administration’s complete failure to present a viable economic vision for Pittsfield, points like a glowing, blinking neon sign to the obvious: To say “no” to the real estate taxes generated by a nationally respected restaurant chain on a site that hasn’t contributed a cent to city coffers in 60 years at a time when the city needs in a desperate way every additional dollar it can get would be folly.

Pick a number: Say the site generates $150,000 in real estate taxes each year. Beggars can be boozers, but they can’t be choosers.

Morandi told The Eagle‘s Jim Therrien that he wished “someone could put something there of real value to the community.” He didn’t provide an example, and that’s precisely the issue. The city, its leaders, and the entrenched apathy it and they have created have failed to discover and deliver “real value.” THE PLANET wishes the PEDA site was thriving with lots of high-pay high-tech manufacturing jobs and money trees, but you know what they say about wishes. There comes those durned beggars again.

Cafua isn’t asking for a handout or public money. It will be paying real estate taxes, however. End of argument.

In the meantime, the do-gooders behind the DD petition overlook the “real value” of much needed tax revenue.

The current proposal for another Dunkin Donuts at the St. Mary’s site is both reasonable and pragmatic. Cafua is not asking the city for a handout. It will come in with good old-fashioned risk capital and will pay the city a heft amount of taxes for the privilege.

THE PLANET endorses Cafua’s plan. Boycott the boycott.

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“Better one suffer than a nation grieve.” — John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, (1681).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

OVE TO ALL.