Kalamazoo Business Owner Calls Out The City with Full Page Ad

There has been a lot of controversial conversations regarding the leadership in Kalamazoo, coming both locally from from people in our community, and nationally from Time Magazine in the past year. Many of the issues brought up is the way Kalamazoo is financed and with hundreds of millions of dollars coming into the city, affordable housing, homelessness, and poverty areas are still an issue with no answer in sight.

Recently a business owner for Outer Slant Media, Joshua Garza took out an entire back page add for the Kalamazoo Gazette, calling out the city for was was allegedly a complete failure to accommodate the businesses' moving process. The ad ran on the back page of Sunday's paper and goes into heavy detail about the situation:

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Most recently we were in the process of moving out of our Downtown location and needed solutions to park our moving pods. We were met with backward-thinking resistance from the management of a local parking authority that threatened to tow our pods and offered no solutions to help us with our relocation. Being at the center of Downtown Kalamazoo, there is no real place to park moving pods, moving vehicles, or large containers to bring new residents or large businesses in or out of the neighborhood.

Mr. Garza has claimed that since he feels Kalamazoo in unprepared for the future and how its growth has been thwarted by a backward-minded, old-rule mentality, he is going to be taking his business out of Kalamazoo, which he says is projected to drive in over $4,000,000 in revenue this year.

So far the city has yet to respond to his ad, but one has to imagine a statement will be made soon. You can read his entire statement below: