Ray's Feed Store

The idea of a “shadow government” running our lives is more than a little bit creepy, but its impossible right?  I mean Garreau, in his article about the presence of shadow governments and their effect on edge cities, talks about HOAs in an almost conspiracy theory voice.  “Your peers, the community association, have the power to take your house from you.” (Edge City, 189)  Can this sort of thing really happen though?  If an HOA or a group of HOAs doesn’t like something, they can’t really make it go away, can they?

The place, Ray’s Feed Store, located at 643 West Baseline, as it has been for the past 26 years.  People come from as far away as Chandler, because it is the only feed store in the area.

There are a lot of animal owners in the area.  People own pigs, cows, horses, goats etc because the land has traditionally been farmland.  They have to feed these animals.  If Ray’s Feed Store closes down then they will have to bring in feed from much, much further away.  Doing so makes the feed that much more expensive and makes it that much more difficult.
 

Thing is, a lot of the new housing developments going into the area don’t like the animals.  In the past legislation limiting the types and number of animals that can be kept in the area have failed to pass.  Another alternative to legislating away the animals is to get rid of the place where the owners buy their feed.

For many years now the city of Phoenix has been straightening 7th Ave.  The problem is that the two parts of what is now 7th Ave were not designed to connect.  As a result, the two did not line up properly and so there is a bit of a curve between the two sections.  If 7th Ave were to be straightened a number of buildings would have to be destroyed.  Ray’s Feed Store is one of those buildings.  Over the past three years there has been more and more talk from the city about eminent domaining Ray’s Feed Store.

A different approach is the bus stop at the corner of 7th Ave and Baseline.  The local HOAs have been bugging the city to enlarge the bus stop for about the past year and a half.  Enlarging the bus stop would involve taking another 20 feet of land from the lot behind it.  What is on the lot behind the bus stop?  Ray’s Feed Store’s only parking lot.  The presence of the bus stop already makes parking in front of the feed store difficult.  If the bus stop were enlarged, then there would be no available parking for Ray’s Feed Store and the store would be forced to close.

Now, is this really the result of a “shadow HOA” trying to eliminate the animal owners in the area by eliminating their only feed store?  I don’t know, but it all seems a rather interesting coincidence.  The truth is out there.

--Christopher Way

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