It greatly disappoints me to read in The Tribune that residents of the Fox Valley area in Kane County gathered to protest the construction of a larger supercollider there. They claim that if the project is built, it will decrease the property value in the area.
This assumption is ridiculous. As Gov. Thompson stated, ”Property values in the area went up after Fermilab was built in the 1960s. The tax value of the Fox Valley would not be what it is today without Fermi.”
These people don`t understand that if the larger accelerator is built elsewhere, scientists, national attention and hundreds of permanent high-tech jobs will be focused away from Fermilab to the other site. The smaller, less- powerful Fermi accelerator eventually will be abandoned. I am sure if this happens, the Fox Valley property values will plummet to their lowest level since WW II.
