The DeKalb County Board voted Wednesday not to sell 113 acres of county farmland in efforts to turn it into a shopping mall.

This action will leave the City of DeKalb and the county at a standstill and will bring adverse effects to the community.

For every argument against the shopping mall, there is a much better argument in favor of one here in DeKalb.

The 300,000 square foot mall would have provided $60 million in sales annually, and about 1,500 jobs.

Every community wants to have more services without raising taxes. A mall would be an ideal way to generate sales taxes and ultimately more money for the community.

owever, downtown business owners say the mall would take business away from their stores. Such might not necessarily be the case to the extent they think. For one thing, the mall would have been built at Barber Greene and Sycamore roads. There are already many stores and businesses in that area that bring community members there.

Also, half of DeKalb’s population are students who storeowners say do not shop at their stores anyway. DeKalb needs to do something to acquire retail sales taxes from half of its population, and this mall would accomplish that.

One Sycamore businessman said the mall would destroy the “soul and spirit of our community.” What about the improvements that could be made with the additional funding?

There is a large possibility this issue will arise again as it has many times in the past. Let’s hope the county board acts more economically responsible.