Keep An Ear to the Ground

Where markets and trends can be detected before they arrive…

Good advice for those who find themselves guiding development and revitalization efforts in communities across the nation, no less vital to our own community of Pottstown.

In many ways, last night’s conditional use hearings at borough hall and today’s news about Family Dollar are about food and the trend toward better, healthier choices.

Americans are getting smart about the difference between quick, pre-packaged, sodium laced, sugary foods and fresh, healthy, wholesome meals.

That’s especially true when temps dip and the snow piles up, as it did in a large portion of the nation this past winter…

There’s nothing about a twinkie that can prepare a body for shoveling the walks or playing in the snow…

quite the same way as a steaming hot bowl of mom’s homemade vegetable soup goodness !!

Today, I shed a little tear for the Family Dollar Corporation who announced store closings and cutbacks in Today’s Mercury News <<click

FamD will forestall opening new stores in 2015 and, they will close 370 stores, a corporate decision that hinged on nose diving stock prices that took a 3% hit in today’s pre-market trading.  The FamD Corp says the winter weather impacted their bottom line, uh…yeah.  Rampant robberies, violence and changing food sensibilities have no impact on their earnings?  

Good Ole’ Pottstown, ever on the “cutting edge” of public opinion and trends.  Many insightful Pottstownians OPPOSED the impending development of a Family Dollar store in one of our town neighborhoods, late last year, but it was approved nonetheless.  Talk about dynamic failures – if this one gets built then closes – Pottstown takes it on the chin – again. 

If borough leaders had taken their time to look behind door #2, if they had done their due diligence, they would have found that another well-known chain store is opening neighborhood markets all over the nation, and…

I might add, doing very, very well.  That would be Trader Joe’s <<click.  Joe knows what Americans are really hankering for:  

HEALTHY CHOICES.

I like a corporation that recognizes who butters the organic, whole grain bread on their directors table, like Trader Joe’s  Neighborhood Involvement Program << click

It can often pay off big to say “NO” to the first thing that comes along, just like finding a partner and falling in  LOVE…

 loving businesses that come into town because they have a solid plan, they are community oriented and they fill a defined need.  I am weary of merely tolerating some businesses, watching many new ones fail, and worse, fending off the crime and loitering that some of them attract.

Exit Stage Left…

Here’s the setting:  a couple new businesses were asking for council’s approval for “Conditional Use” permits, last night.

Two applicants want to open retail businesses in Pottstown.  One gentleman spoke of taking over the old location of the Milkman Lunch Co’s shop on Charlotte St. (next door to the neighborhood nuisance mini-mart), where he’d like to sell water ice and other food stuff.  He appeared unclear about what he would offer, his hours of operation and, most anything else that you would anticipate in a well thought out business plan.

Frankly, why would anyone refrain from shooting straight with the nice fellow who only stands to fail for lack of a strategy and a business plan? I’m guessing it would be a financial hardship for him. We’ve seen plenty of small retail businesses in Pottstown fail over and over and over again…

It’s always heart breaking to see them fold so soon after opening.

Why not encourage him to contact S.C.O.R.E. <<click for their website.  Service Corps of Retired Executives, on High St. can work with him to help him develop a solid business plan.  Not borough councils place to guide prospective business owners?  Sure it is, when they recognize that failing businesses are a poor reflection on the borough.  He can always come back with a plan and open a business that has a good chance to succeed. 

The other applicant is a gentleman who would like to open – TA DA – ANOTHER MINI-MART – on the corner of King and Washington Sts.

Selling..

pre-packaged foods, hot and cold sandwiches and “nicotine” products (as per his application).

There are no fewer than EIGHT stores in easy walking distance of this corner that sell exactly the same things.  The closest of these shops is less than half a block away, around the corner on High St.

I couldn’t help but feel a tad sorry for this couple, it appeared that the new owner of 454 King St. (Loto’s aka the Dirty Bar), Edward Mitchell, is way too eager to pawn it off for profit, while taking no real consideration of Pottstown or the historic neighborhood.

The comments made by Mayor, Sharon Valentine-Thomas, at last night’s Committee of the Whole meeting…well, I’ll just post ‘em here, there’s really no need for commentary.

You can read Evan’s tweets from the meeting <<click

“Mayor Sharon Valentine Thomas said the businesses seeking conditional use permits are exactly the kind of businesses envisioned in the traditional town neighborhood zoning.”

“We hear a lot, sometimes on-line and sometimes face-to-face in person about the revitalization of Pottstown and bringing back the traditional things, and then when we’re presented with the traditional thing, we say we don’t want it,” Thomas said.

As a result, Thomas said, “it makes the situation that should be an easy call, a tough call.“

OK just one or two little questions and a tiny commentary from the peanut gallery, moi:  

Since when has the “traditional thing” in Pottstown’s historical neighborhoods been mini-marts that dispense drugs, commit access card fraud, stores that exclusively pedal junk food and tobacco products?  

WHY should determining the BEST future businesses for Pottstown’s revitalization ever be an “Easy Call” madam Mayor?  It requires work and thoughtful consideration about what’s really best for the community.  

When residents take time to familiarize themselves with proposals that will impact them and their neighbors AND they are given the opportunity, at public meetings, to share their opinions/comments, Ms. Mayor, it matters not if their observations jive with your personal agenda – whatever that may be – but to imply that residents “complicate” decisions is unnecessarily derisive.  Good thing she doesn’t have a vote.

Community Organizers/Portlands Food Desert <<click here.

Read about a poor community in Portland, OR that said:  “NOT IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD” to Traders Joe’s.

Can you hear the pounding of the tiki sticks in Pottstown?