LETTERS: Downtown Summerlin gets it right
To the editor:
Betty Brandt’s letter on Downtown Summerlin was really quite amusing (“Summerlin deserves better,” Wednesday Review-Journal). It is typical of so many Summerlin-area residents who equate living there with living in Beverly Hills or Brentwood or perhaps Greenwich, Conn. They are snobs and consider themselves among the elite.
Living well in Las Vegas is relatively inexpensive, compared with most affluent communities in America. A $500,000 house in our community often is a really nice home. In the vast majority of so-called affluent areas around the country, that would maybe be a starter home or a fixer-upper.
Ms. Brandt said she worked in retail for 17 years. She does not indicate what she did and what her qualifications are for assessing Downtown Summerlin. Here are a few things that Ms. Brandt and other critics may not want to admit: Downtown Summerlin is not a local mall, but rather a regional mall. It is large and expansive. It is well-situated, and most folks who live in the valley are able drive there within 20 minutes.
Visitors will also see that Downtown Summerlin is accessible. Nordstrom read it right, even though that might be offensive to Ms. Brandt and other residents of Summerlin. For those who wish to shop at Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and other high-end stores, Fashion Show mall is on the Strip and accessible to all of us. Fine shopping is not about convenience — those are considered destination stores. Convenience is for supermarkets, pharmacies and gas stations.
Residents in Summerlin are not nearly as affluent as they would like all of us to believe, hence Nordstrom Rack was a good choice for a regional mall; it appeals to a wide range of customers. Ms. Brandt refers to Dillard’s and Macy’s as low-end stores. She must know. The land for Downtown Summerlin was acquired at a very good price, and many of the tenants opened only after receiving very good deals to move there.
So you see, most of the movement to build this mall was a business decision designed to make money. No one was running to Summerlin to build more stores. Check out Tivoli Village, loaded with restaurants and retailers who come and go, with more going than coming.
Summerlin has gotten what it deserves, and hopefully Downtown Summerlin will be a great success. If not, the builders could always tear it down and replace it with a soccer stadium.
RON HIRSCHKIND
LAS VEGAS
Health insurance a scam
To the editor:
The biggest scam ever pulled on the American people is private health insurance (“Nevadans face tough choices,” Oct. 12 Review-Journal). It isn’t even insurance. Insurance is something you buy as a hedge against an unexpected expense. Private health insurance is a very expensive price negotiator/middleman between you and your doctor, and you and your pharmacy.
President George W. Bush’s Medicare Part D was not Medicare, but a huge giveaway to insurance companies and drug companies, because in order to participate, a senior on Medicare must buy private insurance, and only private insurers are allowed to negotiate drug prices. Insurance companies get rich on the difference between what you pay and what your doctor receives.
There are about 40 health insurers in the country, and the average pay of their CEOs is $11 million a year — the highest of any industry — and the only thing they produce is the highest-priced health care in the world. The American people deserve a public-option nonprofit insurance program similar to Medicare, which anybody can buy. But that will not happen because of the billions of dollars the health insurance lobby has spent on congressional campaigns.
Republicans in Congress have voted more than 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, because every time a member of Congress votes to repeal the ACA, that elected official gets more campaign money from the health insurance lobby. The first priority of every member of Congress is raising campaign money.
JIM RILEY
LAS VEGAS
