Mr. Kamenetz, are you talking to ME?!?

I have said this repeatedly—if you are going to call me on the carpet, make sure you don’t make a slip of the tongue, so to speak. In other words, I typically have my ducks in a row and—unless I missed something here—I have some thoughts that this little interview was a payback for my outrageous act of expressing my opinion against the only game in our neck of the woods concerning The Dundalk Eagle.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was taken to the woodshed by the Eagle’s editor, who was missing a few of his own ducks because he failed to do what every good writer does: homework.

Google is a powerful tool, if you know how to use it.

But, all that aside, I find this whole situation amusing because they have no clue what they are doing, and I’m not sure that taking a cue from teleprompters will really help.

I am referring to the tried and true statement, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.”

Providing me with said publicity is Mr. Kamenetz, who makes direct reference to Buzz Beeler (the one and only, folks) with this rather lame quote:

“[Those companies] are not going to respond to [Patch Blogger] Buzz Beeler or some realtor,” Kamenetz said.

Wow, does that ever seem like a “nanny nanny boo boo” statement. Of course, Mr. Kamenetz was reading (upside-down) some issues involving the government center.

Excuse me, Mr. Kamenetz, but there are still some companies is this country that practice something the county can’t spell, much less adopt, and that word is transparency!

Here is where that line of ducks come in.

In the case of the county, or—more specifically—Mr. Kamenetz, his ducks are the potential quackery in his statement because below are the responses I received from the three companies that the developer insisted would be “dinner guests” at the money pit.

And it is not like I did anything underhanded, or even advanced, to get this information. I simply let my fingers do the walking (do you remember that old saying?) and called the three companies who were, by all press accounts, moving to the government center (or so the developer claimed.)

Thankfully, because I am a retired cop of 39 years, I learned not to believe something in print just because someone said it was true.

To recap, here is what the developer Vanguard told the Sun:
According to a Sun article dated August 19, 2014, Vanguard stated that three restaurant chains—Chipotle, Panera, and Five Guys—are among the tenants looking to call the North Point Government Center home.
The article went further with the following quote: “Chipotle, Panera and Five Guys are negotiating letters of intent to locate in the development at Merritt Boulevard and Wise Avenue, according to county officials and Vanguard.”

To make sure there was no doubt as to what was said when I wrote my article on the matter, I have included the e-mails and other information received from Chipotle, Panera, and Five Guys. These are the replies I received:

“A couple of things on this. First, we don’t franchise (all of our restaurants are company owned and operated), so we don’t have franchises going anywhere.

With regard to Dundalk, we don’t discuss plans for specific locations until we have space under lease and construction scheduled. At this time, I don’t see anything in that location that meets those criteria.

(Blogger’s Note: And neither do the citizens of Dundalk. Why? Because the PUD has not been completed.)

To be clear, that isn’t to say that a landlord is misrepresenting anything. It’s only to say that there isn’t anything there that meets the criteria that are required before we will talk about plans for a specific location.”
Chris
Chris Arnold | Communications Director
Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc.

Now that is rather clear, wouldn’t you say?

Here is the reply from Five Guys via a phone conversation I had with corporate headquarters:

We are pleased to announce that we are sold out in the United States and Canada.

Now, when Five Guys says that they are sold out, I don’t think they are talking about hamburgers. The word here is “franchise.”

Now getting back to Mr. Kamenetz’s earlier comment that those companies aren’t going to talk to me, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but they did talk to me. One would think that the companies, if they didn’t want to speak to me, would have just said, “No comment.”

Did Mr. Kamenetz forget that I broke the story of Texas Road House coming to Merritt Park, which was confirmed by other media? Or did his teleprompter experience a meltdown?

Since I’m running out of space, and I have much more on this little ditty, including video of Mr. Kamenetz (Blogger’s note: Warning, this could be damaging to some), I’ll have to wait about 5 minutes before I begin pounding those keys again.

But, let me mention just one more issue before I go. If anyone wishes to check out my writing credentials, just go to my website and look at the pretty pictures, bio, and downloads (under newspaper articles) at buzzbeeler.com

And, as one late news anchor once said, “That’s the way it is.”