The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, Senator Joe Pennacchio has introduced legislation that would provide state income tax credits for landlords who voluntarily grant rent forgiveness to commercial tenants during the pandemic crisis.
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.
