{"id":10770,"date":"2007-07-02T06:31:31","date_gmt":"2007-07-02T13:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2007\/07\/02\/company-town.html"},"modified":"2007-07-02T06:31:31","modified_gmt":"2007-07-02T13:31:31","slug":"company_town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/02\/company_town.html","title":{"rendered":"Company town"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remarkable story about a city\/county that essentially ceded its downtown shopping district to a private developer (in exchange for the developer investing massive amounts to revitalize the space).  The developer now considers the downtown to be the same as a shopping mall<\/a> — private property, subject to whatever restrictions they want, including banning photography, restricting political activism, etc.  The “corner soapbox” isn’t an automatic right when it’s owned by a soap company.<\/p>\n

\n

But Elrich says Peterson insists on treating downtown Silver Spring as if it were an indoor mall. They set and enforce rules that would never pass legal muster on a public street. Political candidates have been stopped from handing out fliers. And photographers such as Py are regularly stopped and told to move along.<\/p>\n

That is Peterson’s right, says Gary Stith, director of the county government’s office in Silver Spring. “It’s like any other shopping center,” he says. “The street was vacated by the county and is leased to the developer. We wanted them to maintain and manage the area.”  County law does require the developer to give the public access to the downtown, “but access and management are two different things,” Stith says.<\/p>\n

[…] Public access to semipublic places is one of the most volatile issues in the law. While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the right to free expression does not extend to a privately owned shopping center, the court also decided that company towns may not restrict the distribution of religious literature. And in a decision allowing union members to picket in a shopping center, the court said that right would be unquestionable “if the shopping-center premises were not privately owned but instead constituted the business area of a municipality.”<\/p>\n

Of course, that’s the case on Ellsworth Drive, which appears to casual visitors as a public street.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Something to consider whenever folks talk about the advantages of “privatizing” stuff.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(via BoingBoing<\/a>)<\/p>\n

<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remarkable story about a city\/county that essentially ceded its downtown shopping district to a private developer (in exchange for the developer investing massive amounts to revitalize the space).  The developer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":51781,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/18\/fiddling-with-the-16th-street-mall.html","url_meta":{"origin":10770,"position":0},"title":"Fiddling with the 16th Street Mall","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 18-Jul-15 11:29am","format":false,"excerpt":"Denver's 16th Street Mall is a pretty cool place, a remarkable success story in terms of revitalizing downtown shopping, dining, and transit. It's length is open only to pedestrians and free busses that run between Union Station and the Civic Center Station. While I've been working in downtown, I've always\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/maxresdefault5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/maxresdefault5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/maxresdefault5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":130163,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/03\/11\/what-then-to-do-about-the-16th-street-mall-part-47-of-395.html","url_meta":{"origin":10770,"position":1},"title":"What, then, to do about the 16th Street Mall? (Part 47 of 395)","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 11-Mar-16 10:22pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It's too crowded. It's not crowded enough. The mall buses keep people away. The mall buses are the main reason people are there. The mall buses should be moved. The mall buses have to stay. The homeless \/ vagrants \/ beggars should be removed. The homeless \/ vagrants \/ beggars\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13151,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/07\/09\/no_more_adventures.html","url_meta":{"origin":10770,"position":2},"title":"No more adventures","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 9-Jul-08 7:33am","format":false,"excerpt":"Given the flailing about that Disney has done in trying to turn its Pleasure Island area of Downtown Disney (Walt Disney World) into a popular (but not teen-hangout-friendly) area, this...","rel":"","context":"In "Disney\/Pixar"","block_context":{"text":"Disney\/Pixar","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/disney"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/adventurers-club1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":15645,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/08\/26\/16th-street-mall-fountain.html","url_meta":{"origin":10770,"position":3},"title":"16th Street Mall Fountain","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 26-Aug-09 8:49am","format":false,"excerpt":"I've always loved these shallow-depression fountains at various spots along the downtown Denver pedestrian mall. They've been mostly off this year, but the other day they seemed to be all running.","rel":"","context":"In "Pix"","block_context":{"text":"Pix","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/pix"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4895,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/12\/11\/so_be_good_for.html","url_meta":{"origin":10770,"position":4},"title":"So be good for goodness sake","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 11-Dec-03 8:56pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Katherine's preschool class, or a large portion of it, was going on a coordinated trip to the Disney on Ice hoohah downtown tonight. For various reasons, Kitten wasn't one of...","rel":"","context":"In "Disney\/Pixar"","block_context":{"text":"Disney\/Pixar","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/disney"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41952,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/11\/and-now-some-fun-church-pictures.html","url_meta":{"origin":10770,"position":5},"title":"And now, some fun church pictures","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 11-May-14 12:09pm","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the Seventh Day Adventist Church in downtown Pomona. +Yi Shun Lai\u00a0and her hubby invited me out last evening to the Pomona Art Walk, which was a lot of fun (more for the company than the actual art) and a nice break.This church is just south of the 2nd\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/IMG_20140510_193837519.jpg.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}