After reading yesterday’s (March 8th) Newburyport Daily News article about the concerns of local businesses downtown, I became a little concerned as well. In the article there was a list of all the property owned by Mr. Karp. The list is about as long as my arm. I’m not sure what the exact figure is but it would seem he must own 75% of the down town area.

What really worried me was a line in the article talking about Stephen Karp’s plans for his property on the waterfront — “Karp has been silent on specifically what he plans to do.”

Now, I could be wrong but did not the Newburyport City Council overwhelmingly vote to approve a zoning change for the Waterfront West area? Does it seem a little strange to anyone else that we would approve something like that without knowing exactly what is planned to be built on the site? Wouldn’t that sort of information be crucial in determining whether or not a zoning change could be made?

As I said, I could be wrong about this, maybe the Newburyport City Council knows something that I don’t. And maybe there is a legitimate explanation, but from where I’m sitting it would seem that the Newburyport City Council dropped the ball on this and was negligent in their duties, in essence it would seem they “sold us out.”

To approve such a drastic and dramatic zoning change such as that without even seeing a plan for what might be built there seems irresponsible to me, and frankly scares me. In my mind, if a proposal to make such a change came in front of the Newburyport City Council, I would hope the Council would make Mr. Karp, or a representative, come share a detailed plan, so that everyone would know exactly what we were getting ourselves into.

Now it may be out of our hands to stop any development that would be harmful to the city. I share the thoughts of Lee Yeoman’s, quoted in the Daily News, “I’m very concerned where we are going with Mr. Karp. He’s a big player in town. Not knowing is a little uneasy.”

Ben Laing, Newburyport