A few weeks ago, my husband and I excitedly told my toddler we
were going to a bounce house. We had been there before; it was a
business on Monterey Street near 5th Street. When we got there, I
noticed the sign above the door was gone, but we climbed the stairs
to the second story anyway, only to find that the business had
closed. Permanently.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I excitedly told my toddler we were going to a bounce house. We had been there before; it was a business on Monterey Street near 5th Street. When we got there, I noticed the sign above the door was gone, but we climbed the stairs to the second story anyway, only to find that the business had closed. Permanently.
As we headed back down Monterey with a wailing infant, I realized the sadness I felt was not just on my daughter’s behalf; it was for the business owner who hadn’t been able to make it work. I felt a little guilty: I knew the owner was another mom, and that she needed my support to keep her establishment going. Yet somehow months (maybe close to a year?) had gone by before I visited again. Tried to visit again, I should say.
That started me thinking about the plight of downtowns across America. We all want walkable downtowns, with stores owned by our neighbors, where we can feel good about spending knowing that the money is going straight back into the community.
Gilroy has a potentially fabulous downtown. It once did: I heard that a former department store used to bring hundreds of customers in at a time during holiday sales.
There are charming businesses there now, with Garlic City Cafe and Mango Street Kids immediately coming to mind. I’m excited that Booksmart of Morgan Hill will be opening a new/used bookstore in January, and that we’ll have another dining option with the tapas restaurant, Lizarran, at Old City Hall.
People worry about downtown being unsafe. It’s a legitimate concern, but I don’t think we should write it off just yet. Businesses support each other; increased foot traffic brings its own safety.
In Oakland, where I lived until 2007, there was an area near Lake Merritt that was absolutely ghetto. A community-minded couple restored and opened an old movie theater there, showing second-runs and offering beer and pizza to movie watchers (the best part: the seats were sofas). That business became an anchor, and soon two cafes were able to open nearby, a previously-failing restaurant began to thrive … and suddenly that area was not only secure, but hip. It all came crashing down when the theater’s landlords doubled the rent and the theater had to close, but before that act of unsanctioned greed, the neighborhood was a model of how to reinvent itself.
Gilroy’s got the right idea with Fifth Street Live: bring residents downtown, get us used to that sensation our grandparents had: the bandstand concert on the green.
Walt Disney was so nostalgic about his childhood spent at such community gatherings that he reproduced his hometown for Disneyland’s Main Street. (A reporter later studied photos of Marceline, Missouri, and saw that its dirt roads were mud batches and the landscape ruined with heavy telephone wires, but Walt had seen past that to the important thing: the crowds gathered to share each other’s company.)
The idea of a walkable downtown filled with independent businesses is so attractive that there is even a National Trust program to help communities rebuild their Main Streets. Due in large part to the interstate highways built after WWII, reports the National Trust’s website, “Downtown businesses closed or moved to the mall, shoppers dwindled, property values and sales tax revenues dropped … Neglected buildings, boarded-up storefronts and empty, trash-strewn streets gradually reinforced the public’s perception that nothing was happening downtown, that nothing was worth saving there.”
The National Trust’s Main Streets Conference happens May 2-5 in Oklahoma City; if we aren’t already sending city staff, we should.
Not only does a thriving downtown allow us to support small, local business owners, it’s visually pleasing, with historic and diverse architecture.
The alternative is incredibly depressing. Big box stores look the same community to community. Driving through the flatlands of Kansas last year, I was blown away by how the retail enclave was indistinguishable from ours in Gilroy, or in Oakland, or Maine for that matter. When everything looks the same, we have lost something vital that defines us as a city.
My final point is that while downtown business support each other, they also provide healthy competition if the products offered are similar. It was recently reported that prices at Wal-Mart stores in areas where downtown has been effectively crushed are significantly higher than at Wal-Marts where downtown still thrives. In other words, prices are low at Wal–Mart until all competition dies, then they rise perceptibly.
The sad thing is, in an economy like this, we tend to go where the prices are lower. You’ll see me at Wal-Mart occasionally, and I’ll greet you sheepishly. But I do try to shop at independent stores if I can … because I hate the fact that someday when I want to go, they might not be there anymore.
For details on the National Trust’s Main Street program, visit www.mainstreet.org.
