Jimi Hendrix used feedback to get louder and more piercing sounds to fill event centers with deafening noise until, eventually, he just put his guitar down and it screamed on without him.
Feedback is caused by outputs cycled back into inputs. Feedback propagates itself, becoming bigger and bigger. Feedback can occur in anything that has an input and an output, even in land use.
Land use determines land values. Land in Manhattan, because it can be used for valuable office buildings, commands a higher price than farm land in Alabama. The flip side of this is that land values determine land use. No one buys land in Manhattan to grow corn. The income from corn could never justify the land price. That’s the land use feedback loop; land use drives land value, which drives land use – and so on.
Allowing high-income activities — such as event centers and restaurants — on land zoned for agriculture elevates the price of the farmland until it becomes unaffordable for farming. Just as Jimi’s guitar got louder and louder, creating a screeching cacophony of sound, agricultural land occupied by event centers and restaurants will get more and more expensive, driving away farming and bringing in more event centers and restaurants along with the activity, noise and traffic they generate.
This dynamic has always driven land use planning in this community. And it is why the Peninsula Township board must not make the decision the wineries’ want them to make.
Will we have a future of more and more event centers, bars and restaurants, or will farming continue on Old Mission Peninsula?
Current planning and zoning wisely allow for tasting rooms so wineries can profit from products directly tied to Old Mission. But, equally wisely, it does not allow private centers for wedding receptions and other events, or restaurants and bars. Those uses are not tied to agriculture — even when they are located on a farm. Allowing tasting rooms to become event venues and restaurants and bars would mean that profits come from land use that is not farming, driving up land values and forcing farming to fade away.
Defending against the lawsuit brought by the wineries is critical to the future of land use on Old Mission Peninsula, and critical to avoiding a future of many, many, more businesses that depend on generating significant amounts of traffic to succeed.
The wineries’ legal demand for financial damages from Peninsula Township residents is not the damage that worries me the most; instead, it’s the irreversible damage to the future of farming, the damage to the future character of the peninsula and the damage to the safe, peaceful future of the community.
After Jimi Hendrix drove his instrument to the apex of feedback, he threw it to the stage floor where it continued to scream wildly, and he finally lit it on fire.
Let’s not let this land use feedback loop drive our peninsula to such an apex of event center and restaurant activity that it seems like it’s on fire.