It’s called the Commerce Business Information Center, but the Downtown Development Authority’s building at 12 Pine Avenue across from Spencer Park contains zero information on business.
Several years ago, the DDA submitted a grant application to the United States Department of Agriculture for funds to buy and rehab the former dry cleaners’ business. The premise was that the DDA would use the building to promote business, in part by making it a place where visitors could learn about area businesses. The DDA got $70,000 from USDA with that sales pitch.
From the beginning, the concept of creating a business information center was a subterfuge. What the DDA really wanted was public rest rooms for events in the recently rehabbed Spencer Park. Still, at the time, the idea was to have something of a welcome center that would have a “museumish” quality and a “wall of history” to detail the city’s evolution from Harmony Grove, through the railroad boom and the textile era to the present and thus be something of an asset.
Four years after receiving the grant, the DDA has not kept its end of the bargain. Aside from providing a meeting room for the DDA and its committees, and rest rooms for events in the park, the building is seldom used for anything that couldn’t more efficiently be held in the Commerce Civic Center. There is no business information, no welcome center, not even a display about Commerce’s business history.
This is a fraudulent use of federal tax dollars. Either the city should utilize the Commerce Business Information Center to provide business information and support, or it should return $70,000 to the federal treasury before someone from USDA inspects the building and demands that the grant funds be repaid.
