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southern MN | My town of 15,000 has gone to letting 1/3 of the 1st floor downtown (zoned or permitted or whatever for retail) to be renovated into apartment living.
There just isn't any money turnover to continue the small store retail any more.
Walmart and Menards on the edge of town does the retail any more.
Specialty stores come and go, they sell well for 6 months when new to the area, or over their particular holiday season; but then their market is satisfied and sales become a trickle and the specialty shop can't afford the snow removal fees, the parking fees, the taxes, and the extra taxes that have been added and added and added over the 1980s-2005 when retail was fairly good. Then you need handicap accommodations for every elevation change, and modern large batherooms, all of that is fine but it removes retail space and so taxes are even higher on actual shelf space. The taxes have just priced the old small storefronts out of the market.
My town decided they needed nicer streets, so raised taxes and added park benches, tree tubs, and fancy tile work in the sidewalks. Yes it looked nice and you need a nice shopping presentation; but it raised taxes, and didn't really bring in busloads of shoppers? Seemed more negative than positive to the businesses at hand. Since then, the fancy tile turned out to be very slick over winter making it a minor hazard; and it has popped loose and cracked out in just a few years, now most of it is being chipped out and concrete poured in the outlines - using more taxes to do the repairs.
You have to make retail sales a profitable, ongoing, real deal and then business will come.
You can't force business. You have make a path for it to work, dollars and cents.
Lower rents would be fine, but it's the creep of taxes that is the real stranglehold on the cost side. The empty building doesn't cost so much; try to renovate it for current code and the taxes that go with an operating business and the price ratchets quickly. Those building owners are between a rock and a hard place too.
Paul | |
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City ordinance question
