Tom Winston: Council shouldn’t run businesses

Regarding the Sept. 17 news article “Raleigh’s restaurant tenant is turning into pizza joint”: The Raleigh City Council continues to show its ineptitude in matters of business. These folks just approved spending $600,000 a year on a bike-sharing business that promises to bring in $400,000 year.

But before that they spent a million dollars to open a white table cloth restaurant on Fayetteville Street that closed in four years. (the Mint– that’s what it cost taxpayers). Oh, then they reopened it as Bolt Bistro & Bar and that’s tanking because the city dictated the atmosphere and the menu. Now the owner wants to dump that format and change it to a pizza place.

So now our entrepreneurial council agreed and will pay another $150,000 in free rent to make this change. When is the City Council going to get a clue? It isn’t competent to innovate, start, run or market businesses. It just plain makes poor business decisions.

It should sell the building and leave the entrepreneurship to the good people of Raleigh who know what they are doing. And learn the this lesson: The market decides what downtown Raleigh will look like – not the politicians.

This story was originally published September 19, 2016 at 5:14 PM with the headline "Tom Winston: Council shouldn’t run businesses."