Tag: empty storefronts

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Readers says , “This $15/hr, more than anything else going on, will break our CBD permanently”

CBD_theridgewoodblog

“This $15/hr, more than anything else going on, will break our CBD permanently. Our CBD businesses are all getting by on thin margins now: restaurants & retail. Now the state will reduce those margins even more. Look for more empty storefronts. The No-Math crowd behind $15 in the village [Library/Hospital Cabal, Apartments, Garage] are also Murphy Voters. So as all the new parking [proven that we don’t need] comes online and the $20m bill comes due this year, there will be fewer businesses to pull shoppers who will pay to park to pay the loan. How do you imagine that it will be paid for [hint: your highest-in-the-area property taxes/fees are going up, Way Up]. Also, as businesses shorten hours to cover the artificially forced higher cost of labor, less need for employee-only parking as there be fewer people working in the CBD. All these facts were known before Ramon/Jeff/Bernie pushed the garage and the Library Glamificiation. None of this is all that hard to understand unless you are a Socialist like a Murphy voter or our VC.”

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Reader says If Ridgewood landlords are content with empty storefronts for months on end, then that’s that

parking CBD fullhouse theridgewoodblog.net

If the landlords are content with empty storefronts for months on end, then that’s that. They could lower rents, but that hurts their bottom line. Their misguided solution is increase the crowd level with high density housing – so we’ll have more people ignoring the shops in the CBD, and more Amazon deliveries to the new apartment blocks. This is a market issue that can’t be legislated away.

Any business that provides an incremental service will continue to survive in the downtown setting. Restaurants provide cooking and service, in addition to a social atmosphere. Bars provide a meeting place, booze, and a bartender who will listen to your bellyaching when nobody else cares (the bartender doesn’t care either, by the way…and that dancer at Satin Dolls is not working her way through college, and doesn’t think you’re funny, but I digress). Certain goods, like high end clothes that need to be fitted, will still sell. Tailors, barbers, etc etc. See a pattern? Even a used guitar store that buys select instruments online, sets them up well, and offers them to be played before they’re bought might do well. But the traditional consumer goods re-seller is dead on arrival – they can’t pay their rent on razor thin markups necessitated by competition from Amazon.