Caufield: "What makes a town livable, unique, and a place that one desires to reside?"

Here's the blog link: New Albany 365. My advice to Kate is to refrain from doing your civic duty and running for office. Columns can disappear when you do that.

CAUFIELD: The New Albany 365 experiment, by Kate Caufield (News and Tribune)

... What makes a town livable, unique, and a place that one desires to reside?

It’s the unique, independent businesses that locate there, and the residents who take their hard-earned money and spend it there. It’s the towns that recognize that though the ubiquitous chains bring temporary jobs and short lived cash injections, it is the small, independently owned, and local businesses that make them vibrant, thriving, and sustainable.

Recently, yet another study has emerged that shows the impact on a local economy of buying at an indie, local business is roughly four times the impact of shopping at a box store — depending on what type of establishment. The study can be found here: localfirst.org/think-local/slc-economic-study

One of the more interesting things to come from this study was the fact that local retailers return an average of 52 percent of their revenues back into the local economy, while chain retailers only return about 14 percent. Restaurants are even more remarkable. If you go out for date night to an indie local restaurant, they’ll recirculate approximately 79 percent back into your local economy, while chains average around 30 percent.