AUGUST 12, 2015 LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2015, 10:42 AM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
A renaissance of sorts is taking place in downtown Ridgewood, one of many business districts to nearly bottom out during the recession born in the previous decade.
In late 2009, two years after the collapse of the once-robust housing market, The Ridgewood News identified roughly 40 vacant storefronts in the Central Business District (CBD), and a handful of others teetered financially. That was, however, as low as the times would go.
Fortunes began to change as merchants made smarter business decisions and consumer confidence grew.
“It felt like a whole different time back then, but you could sense a turnaround coming,” according to Joan Groome, executive director of the Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce.
Just one year after reaching basement numbers, the amount of downtown vacancies was slashed in half. Groome had accompanied the newspaper on a walking tour of the CBD in late summer of 2010 and counted just 20 empty storefronts.
She was back out there with The Ridgewood News last week, cutting through Tuesday morning humidity to evaluate the downtown business climate on the eve of this weekend’s Summer Sidewalk Sale. During the stroll, she remarked on the business district’s recovery and the community-wide effort to improve the CBD.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/downtown-ridgewood-stays-on-upswing-1.1391054