Maybe someone can explain this to me: Why, in this no-growth region, should taxpayers subsidize new development at suburban shopping malls?

Here's the tally so far:

1) Monroe County's Industrial Development Agency - COMIDA - has agreed to give tax breaks to Wilmorite to spiff up its Greece Ridge Mall. Wilmorite says it needs the improvements to keep existing tenants, attract new ones, and stay competitive.

2) Wilmorite also wants taxpayers to help spiff up Eastview Mall. Wilmorite says it needs the help so it can attract new, higher-end stores to the mall. Eastview is located in Ontario County, just past the Monroe County line, so the good citizens of our neighboring county will cough up for that one, through the Ontario Industrial Development Agency.

Just for context, let me remind us all that the company asking for help from the lowly taxpayers of Monroe and Ontario Counties owes the taxpayers of the City of Rochester a bunch of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes on the Sibley Building downtown. And, if we really want to set some context: We can trace the death of retail in downtown Rochester directly to the construction of Wilmorite's suburban shopping malls.

Look: I recognize that Wilmorite was simply being smart, creating shopping opportunities as housing spread to the suburbs. It was taking advantage of the free-market system.

Fine. But somehow the free-market system isn't good enough for those malls now. The malls need taxpayers' help to prosper. Or attract Nordstrom's. Or keep tenants from going somewhere else. (Where, I wonder.)

In a recent Democrat and Chronicle article about the Eastview spiff-up, I found a curious comment from a Wilmorite official. Noting Eastview's growth in 2003, which brought in "such higher-end tenants as J. Jill, Coach, and P.F. Chang's," VP Dennis Wilmot said this: "The success of the 2003 expansion proved that there is a demand for higher-end goods in Rochester."

"Success"? "Demand"?

If there's a demand for this spiffing up and expansion, why should taxpayers help pay for it?

And if we can afford to subsidize the malls - whose major tenants are national chains - why aren't we handing out some goodies to independent, locally owned retailers?

Make no mistake: the malls are in direct competition with the local stores. And the chains - suburban big-boxes as well as smaller mall tenants - have contributed to the deaths of numerous independent retailers.

Which brings us to:

3) Bersin Properties LLC, the latest owner of Irondequoit Mall, which wants Monroe County taxpayers to help pay for the next iteration of that problem-plagued place. Irondequoit Mall was created by Wilmorite, which apparently decided years ago that the mall didn't have a good future, and sold it. Bersin wants COMIDA to "assist in the revitalization and expansion" of the mall - now estimated at 784,000 square feet - and:

• Add another 546,000 square feet of retail space;
• Add 420 hotel rooms, about 330 apartment units, create 195,000 square feet of office space, and create "approximately 158,000 square feet of theater and restaurants and other assorted mixed uses."

I'm not making this up.

So which is it we want? Government involved in retail? Or the free market? We can't have it both ways. If government were involved in a rational way - regional planning, for instance - somebody would be noting that there's no demand for all that retail space (not to mention the laughable vision of more apartments, office space, and hotel rooms). A rational government would not ask taxpayers to throw good money down the drain. These major malls will be in competition with one another. Somebody's going to lose.

If we want the free market to rule, fine. But don't ask me to help pay for these mall wars.

(By the way: COMIDA is holding a public hearing on the Bersin request at 9:30 a.m. on December 29 at Irondequoit Mall.)