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Our stressed commercial assimilative capacity
28 June 2008
[indent]I'm not an expert. That's what the mayor says. I've run a retail business here for the past nine years, working in the store sometimes 50-60 hours a week doing all aspects of retail business from accounting to making copies to packing, to advertising and balancing the cash. I've hired and trained staff, installed new technologies and attended retail business seminars and workshops. But that, of course, doesn't make me an expert.
Many years ago, I worked in bookstores in Toronto, managing some, even owned my own for a couple of years. I managed Toronto's largest game store for a couple of years, too. I worked part time in a local computer store, for a couple of years. But none of that makes me an expert, either.
Nor does the years I spent in the local media, attending BIA and council meetings, covering the local businesses and politics.
So when I say our small town (pop. 18,000) doesn't have the population or economy or demographics to support a vast amount of additional commercial and retail space (more than 500,000 sq. ft), well since I'm no expert, you'll have to discount my comments as uninformed opinion. Just because I say our assimilative capacity for commercial growth is already full, just ignore me. The experts tell us something different. They tell us we've got people just bursting to spend money here, waiting anxiously for the opportunity. Why they're not spending it already is unclear, but build it and - we're told by the experts - they will come, wallets in hand.
The experts tell us we'll all be richer, the downtown more prosperous, the tills overflowing as people line up to buy, if we just build a ton more retail and commercial mall space. Not downtown, mind you, not in the place we want most to protect, not the place where we really want the people to shop, but out with all the other big box stores in a vehicle-required pedestrian-hostile zone that will look just like every other big box store mall in communities across the country, selling what every other big box store and mall outlet sells across Canada. Somehow not being different from everyone else, not standing out, not retaining our own identity, is the key to success. Apparently building look-alike malls, rather than building downtown, will help strengthen the downtown.
Consumers, we're told, will be the winners, apparently because they will be able to choose from a larger volume of the same offshore-made goods that seems to be stocked in every store, and that's what they've been waiting for.
Remember: they're the experts.
And the experts also warn we shouldn't be putting too many restrictions - maybe none at all - on retail size and floor plates because it would be bad for growth. And growth, they tell us, is good. We learn from Hometown Advantage that,But this sort of idea probably comes from non-experts like me and you. Our experts have given us different advice.
Over the years, I've spoken at length to other business owners in town, people who have run their own retail or business outlet for much longer than I have. I've spoken to restaurant owners, to big box store staff and managers, to small wine-business operators, to grocery store clerks, to pizza parlour owners, to video store managers, to fellow franchisees and to pet store owners. I've talked with business owners downtown, in the mall, on Hume Street, and along First Street. I've talked with successful and unsuccessful store owners. I've talked with bank managers, with appliance store owners, with used book store owners, with landlords, with property owners and renters.
I've spoken to them as recently as yesterday about commercial growth in town, about our retail community's health, about sales, about staffing issues, about product mix, about the buying habits of local people versus those of part-timers. They have all agreed: the pie is not very big and more commercial growth won't help: it will just make the slices thinner. For many businesses in town, the slice is already about as thin as they can afford. Any less of that precarious share will mean they can't continue.
Business owners tell me they are already groaning under the pressures of rising taxes, rising fuel and shipping costs, rising rents, rising staffing costs, rising business fees, inventory costs and dwindling disposable incomes that mean lower sales. Business owners downtown complain about the additional pressures of limited parking spaces, BIA levies, street closures for events and increased competition from mall stores.
Even some of the the big box store staff have told me they're not doing as well as they hoped when their experts predicted success here. Some of those stores are pretty empty most of the time. In at least one, I've been told, staff are asked to move their cars around in the parking lot several times a day to create the illusion the store is busy. There are stores in the mall with more staff than customers every time you visit them.
No one I've spoken to thinks our planned commercial expansion will help them. They all think it will hurt existing businesses.
Of course, they're not experts, not one of the hundreds of them I've spoken to is an expert. Simply running a store doesn't make you one, not matter how long you've been at it. Even a couple of generations of business ownership, with decades of day-to-day business experience won't make you an expert. The lack of customers that hurts your business obviously can't be an indicator of anything except the huge potential pool of cash-in-hand customers just waiting to descend from wherever they're hiding once we have built even more retail outlets for them. The shopping frenzy will begin as soon as those new doors open. The experts have told us so, and who are we to dispute that? We're not the experts.
An expert is someone who goes to university, rents an office, hangs out a shingle proclaiming 'expert for hire,' then when you offer him or her a lot of money, writes reports that tell you how to run your town. True, the next day that very same expert may be writing a glowing report for the developer that expresses the wonder of how a new mall is going to enhance the quality of life by adding more big box stores to a community... but that's not really a conflict, is it?
An expert is someone who makes impressive PowerPoint presentations with numbers and charts and graphs that sway glassy-eyed councillors into compliance. An expert doesn't actually work in a store, an expert doesn't have to sit in a bank office trying to beg for a slightly larger overdraft, or tell a staff person they've been laid off because sales are slow. An expert doesn't stay late after closing to finish a customer's order because the deadline is tomorrow. An expert doesn't do stock inventories or ordering. An expert doesn't unload the boxes from the delivery truck and try to find a place to store them. An expert doesn't train staff, or operate a cash register, or fill shelves. In order to understand the retail business and make those prognostications, an expert has to be above all of that day-to-day stuff. Experts don't get their hands dirty with work. Their job is to think.
The experts can look outside our boundaries and see the treasure trove of people just beyond our borders in neighbouring communities who are eager to spend their money here instead of in their own, closer big box stores. They can see that those people - even the children still in strollers - have large amounts of money available and are willing to take the longer, slower drive into Collingwood to shop in malls that sell exactly what they can get for the same price a shorter, faster drive away in identical malls and big-box outlets.
So when the experts tell us we have to grow to survive, and all that commercial sprawl is necessary to that survival, we should listen. They must have thought a lot about it, so it has to be true. After all, they're the experts, and, like the mayor reminds us, I'm not.
When I point out that Collingwood already has a lot more retail space per person than the average in Canada, and that the proposed expansion will double that amount, giving us perhaps the highest ratio of retail space per capita in the whole country, well, I'm not an expert, so what do I know? When I point out that massive amounts of retail and commercial space aren't sustainable in an economy increasingly dominated by a high percentage of seniors, where the closing of industries is reducing the income of the average working person to subsistence levels, where retail businesses are already struggling to retain staff, well I'm no expert, so I can't possibly be correct.
Back in 2002, a public meeting in a small US community was presented with the experts' opinion on how an eerily similar proposal for big box growth would help the town's other retail businesses. The struggle is documented in a book called MegaMall on the Hudson by David Porter and Chester L. Mirsky. Here's an excerpt; see if you can spot the similarities:
But the parallels must be meaningless because the experts have decreed that our growth IS sustainable, and that this massive extra retail and commercial development will not hurt us - as it has in thousands of similar situations across Canada and the USA - but will actually strengthen us, make our downtown more vital and vibrant, and draw consumers from area where they have, so far, refused to come from to shop here.
So despite the dismal track record experienced almost everywhere else this sort of sprawl has taken place, where downtowns have collapsed because of uncontrolled commercial growth on the outskirts, where big box stores have killed small local retail businesses, our story will be exactly the opposite.
They're the experts, so they should know these things. I'm not. I'm just a local business owner with some useless experience in retail who talks a lot with other local non-expert retail staff and business owners. What do I know?[/indent]
Many years ago, I worked in bookstores in Toronto, managing some, even owned my own for a couple of years. I managed Toronto's largest game store for a couple of years, too. I worked part time in a local computer store, for a couple of years. But none of that makes me an expert, either.
Nor does the years I spent in the local media, attending BIA and council meetings, covering the local businesses and politics.
The experts tell us we'll all be richer, the downtown more prosperous, the tills overflowing as people line up to buy, if we just build a ton more retail and commercial mall space. Not downtown, mind you, not in the place we want most to protect, not the place where we really want the people to shop, but out with all the other big box stores in a vehicle-required pedestrian-hostile zone that will look just like every other big box store mall in communities across the country, selling what every other big box store and mall outlet sells across Canada. Somehow not being different from everyone else, not standing out, not retaining our own identity, is the key to success. Apparently building look-alike malls, rather than building downtown, will help strengthen the downtown.
Consumers, we're told, will be the winners, apparently because they will be able to choose from a larger volume of the same offshore-made goods that seems to be stocked in every store, and that's what they've been waiting for.
Remember: they're the experts.
And the experts also warn we shouldn't be putting too many restrictions - maybe none at all - on retail size and floor plates because it would be bad for growth. And growth, they tell us, is good. We learn from Hometown Advantage that,
Quote
A growing number of cities and towns are adopting store size caps to ensure that new retail development is scaled appropriately for the community and does not overwhelm the local economy or exacerbate sprawl and traffic congestion. Most communities choose an upper limit of between 35,000 and 75,000 square feet.
Over the years, I've spoken at length to other business owners in town, people who have run their own retail or business outlet for much longer than I have. I've spoken to restaurant owners, to big box store staff and managers, to small wine-business operators, to grocery store clerks, to pizza parlour owners, to video store managers, to fellow franchisees and to pet store owners. I've talked with business owners downtown, in the mall, on Hume Street, and along First Street. I've talked with successful and unsuccessful store owners. I've talked with bank managers, with appliance store owners, with used book store owners, with landlords, with property owners and renters.
I've spoken to them as recently as yesterday about commercial growth in town, about our retail community's health, about sales, about staffing issues, about product mix, about the buying habits of local people versus those of part-timers. They have all agreed: the pie is not very big and more commercial growth won't help: it will just make the slices thinner. For many businesses in town, the slice is already about as thin as they can afford. Any less of that precarious share will mean they can't continue.
Business owners tell me they are already groaning under the pressures of rising taxes, rising fuel and shipping costs, rising rents, rising staffing costs, rising business fees, inventory costs and dwindling disposable incomes that mean lower sales. Business owners downtown complain about the additional pressures of limited parking spaces, BIA levies, street closures for events and increased competition from mall stores.
Even some of the the big box store staff have told me they're not doing as well as they hoped when their experts predicted success here. Some of those stores are pretty empty most of the time. In at least one, I've been told, staff are asked to move their cars around in the parking lot several times a day to create the illusion the store is busy. There are stores in the mall with more staff than customers every time you visit them.
No one I've spoken to thinks our planned commercial expansion will help them. They all think it will hurt existing businesses.
Of course, they're not experts, not one of the hundreds of them I've spoken to is an expert. Simply running a store doesn't make you one, not matter how long you've been at it. Even a couple of generations of business ownership, with decades of day-to-day business experience won't make you an expert. The lack of customers that hurts your business obviously can't be an indicator of anything except the huge potential pool of cash-in-hand customers just waiting to descend from wherever they're hiding once we have built even more retail outlets for them. The shopping frenzy will begin as soon as those new doors open. The experts have told us so, and who are we to dispute that? We're not the experts.
An expert is someone who goes to university, rents an office, hangs out a shingle proclaiming 'expert for hire,' then when you offer him or her a lot of money, writes reports that tell you how to run your town. True, the next day that very same expert may be writing a glowing report for the developer that expresses the wonder of how a new mall is going to enhance the quality of life by adding more big box stores to a community... but that's not really a conflict, is it?
An expert is someone who makes impressive PowerPoint presentations with numbers and charts and graphs that sway glassy-eyed councillors into compliance. An expert doesn't actually work in a store, an expert doesn't have to sit in a bank office trying to beg for a slightly larger overdraft, or tell a staff person they've been laid off because sales are slow. An expert doesn't stay late after closing to finish a customer's order because the deadline is tomorrow. An expert doesn't do stock inventories or ordering. An expert doesn't unload the boxes from the delivery truck and try to find a place to store them. An expert doesn't train staff, or operate a cash register, or fill shelves. In order to understand the retail business and make those prognostications, an expert has to be above all of that day-to-day stuff. Experts don't get their hands dirty with work. Their job is to think.
The experts can look outside our boundaries and see the treasure trove of people just beyond our borders in neighbouring communities who are eager to spend their money here instead of in their own, closer big box stores. They can see that those people - even the children still in strollers - have large amounts of money available and are willing to take the longer, slower drive into Collingwood to shop in malls that sell exactly what they can get for the same price a shorter, faster drive away in identical malls and big-box outlets.
So when the experts tell us we have to grow to survive, and all that commercial sprawl is necessary to that survival, we should listen. They must have thought a lot about it, so it has to be true. After all, they're the experts, and, like the mayor reminds us, I'm not.
When I point out that Collingwood already has a lot more retail space per person than the average in Canada, and that the proposed expansion will double that amount, giving us perhaps the highest ratio of retail space per capita in the whole country, well, I'm not an expert, so what do I know? When I point out that massive amounts of retail and commercial space aren't sustainable in an economy increasingly dominated by a high percentage of seniors, where the closing of industries is reducing the income of the average working person to subsistence levels, where retail businesses are already struggling to retain staff, well I'm no expert, so I can't possibly be correct.
Back in 2002, a public meeting in a small US community was presented with the experts' opinion on how an eerily similar proposal for big box growth would help the town's other retail businesses. The struggle is documented in a book called MegaMall on the Hudson by David Porter and Chester L. Mirsky. Here's an excerpt; see if you can spot the similarities:
Quote
At least 50 observers attended the planning board meeting of December 5th. Alerted especially through ACT's public meeting of December 1st, community people (including many from Ashbury businesses) recognized that Marvell's preliminary economic impact report would potentially be decisive in affecting the megamall outcome and the well-being of Ashbury generally. By the time Marvell presented his first few statements, the tone and ultimate conclusion of the report became clear. Marvell saw the mall in positive economic terms as an advantage to the town and compatible with existing businesses. The report anticipated a modest growth of the local economy, saw the project construction phase and new jobs as welcome additional stimuli, stated that there was ample consumer demand presently unfulfilled by local retailers and promised that the project would have minimal impact on local retailers. In any case, "the heightened competition among the [local] retailers will make the consumers of Ashbury the clear winner from the project." He further assured the board and audience that Wal-Marts in places like Huntington, Long Island, Detroit and Atlanta had not hurt local business...
The audience was stunned and outraged and broke into laughter at this one-sided presentation which sounded more pro-Moselle Plaza than the report by Magellan Construction itself. While Marvell's brief discussion was vulnerable to critics in its gaps of research topics as well as for what it asserted, it was especially discouraging to activists that the "independent" perspective so strongly fought for had ultimately accepted so fully the framework Magellan had presented months before. While analytical sections within the brief report were of questionable scientific validity, the overall aura of "objectivity" was especially alarming. Many activists left the meeting assuming that Marvell and Renwick Brothers had simply assessed their future prospects and decided that, as Reynolds had emphasized, since Magellan was "the largest developer outside of New York City" within the state, it was no trifle to risk angering.
The audience was stunned and outraged and broke into laughter at this one-sided presentation which sounded more pro-Moselle Plaza than the report by Magellan Construction itself. While Marvell's brief discussion was vulnerable to critics in its gaps of research topics as well as for what it asserted, it was especially discouraging to activists that the "independent" perspective so strongly fought for had ultimately accepted so fully the framework Magellan had presented months before. While analytical sections within the brief report were of questionable scientific validity, the overall aura of "objectivity" was especially alarming. Many activists left the meeting assuming that Marvell and Renwick Brothers had simply assessed their future prospects and decided that, as Reynolds had emphasized, since Magellan was "the largest developer outside of New York City" within the state, it was no trifle to risk angering.
But the parallels must be meaningless because the experts have decreed that our growth IS sustainable, and that this massive extra retail and commercial development will not hurt us - as it has in thousands of similar situations across Canada and the USA - but will actually strengthen us, make our downtown more vital and vibrant, and draw consumers from area where they have, so far, refused to come from to shop here.
So despite the dismal track record experienced almost everywhere else this sort of sprawl has taken place, where downtowns have collapsed because of uncontrolled commercial growth on the outskirts, where big box stores have killed small local retail businesses, our story will be exactly the opposite.
They're the experts, so they should know these things. I'm not. I'm just a local business owner with some useless experience in retail who talks a lot with other local non-expert retail staff and business owners. What do I know?[/indent]
We bought a beautiful pine hutch and lots of Christmas gifts.
I couldn't agree with you more.....we don't need more box stores. We need to support our beautiful downtown. How about a 5-story condo building??