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Edited on Wed Aug-22-07 10:03 PM by rucky
We recently bought a historic building in the downtown area of our small town of about 20,000. It's a stretch for us, but we're hoping to move-in my wife's Children's store, once the current tenant's lease expires. The building next door to it caved in last February from accumulated snowfall - the roof collapsed into the top floor, which collapsed into the second floor. Since then, there's been a barrier around the building that extends to the edge of our tenant's storefront entrance. Other than that, not a damn thing has been done to that building.
So we've been patient for 8 months - talking to the building owners and talking to the city. Apparently, the insurance company is calling a total loss, but the city won't issue a permit for anything but complete historical preservation. It was a beautiful building that got neglected, but now it would cost about twice of what it's worth to restore it. While this deadlock is going on, all of the mom & pop shops on the block are suffering - no parking, and not really a pleasant place for folks to shop. Our tenant is about to go out of business, and soon we'll be stuck with an empty building that we can't move into and a mortgage payment we will have trouble making ourselves.
After getting the neverending runaround from all parties involved, we thought it was time to publicly address the City Council with our concerns. It wasn't really in the best interest of the community to keep this thing in the condition it is. If they're to mandate a restoration, then find the money, pass a levy, hit up a donor, or find a buyer and get on with it. Otherwise level it and build parking. We don't care (we could use more parking). We just need it resolved. Now it's apparent the issue is going to court.
We urged the city to act swiftly and avoid the costly time delays - real people who make a living are suffering.
Today we got an earful from the Mayor, saying we ambushed him in public, and the issue was being resolved privately at the Mayor's roundtable meeting. My wife told him that we must have lost the invitation to that one, because we have not gotten as much as a phone call from him or any city official - nor has any of the local businesses affected by this.
The larger issue here is this - the Main Street USA downtown is becoming extinct. The people who have business there are from the community. When people shop there, the money stays in the community. On the outskirts are the big-box stores and strip malls who price their space to keep the mom&pops out of that market. What we're facing is the Wal-Mart and all the other chains cropping up like mad and killing our downtown. The community doesn't realize that when they shop there, they are destroying that downtown that they take so much pride in driving by, looking at, watching a band play on the square (for free). The mom-and-pops are already very fragile, and now we have a downtown that looks like Beirut, and the Mayor doesn't get it. He and his good ol' boys are taking care of it over martinis.
Why on earth does anybody go into business for themselves?
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