A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
(Last week: Yellow lines, and what comes due.)
To me, symbolism matters.
To me, the short stretch of sidewalk in front of Bank Street Brewhouse, my downtown business, stands for far more than it may seem, at least at first glance.
The year was 2009.
From the very beginning, as NABC’s owners planned what would eventually become BSB, we hoped the city of New Albany would be able to help us think and act creatively with the sidewalk’s immediate future. Then-mayor Doug England was receptive, as were other city officials and the Board or Works.
Our idea was to sacrifice three parking spaces and replace the existing, pitted and narrow sidewalk, which appeared to have been untouched for a half-century (and perhaps even since the construction of the building itself in 1950), by pouring new concrete and pushing the perimeter out into Bank Street.
Steve Resch, the building owner and contractor, showed the plan to all appropriate authorities. The city took bids, and the price for our Bank Street work and another sidewalk replacement project in front of the future Wick’s Pizza on State Street proved to be far less than what the city originally anticipated (combined, the bid was around $16,000). All parties were in agreement. The requisite jackhammering, mixing, pouring, signing and coloring took place, and as a result, we had frontage for a patio.
Concurrent to this $8,000 sidewalk undertaking, NABC was in the process of investing around $750,000 into BSB as our second brewery and restaurant. This was only the initial investment. All told, we’ve put more than one million dollars into an abandoned cinder block day-old bread store building. Profits have been minimal, if any. That’s okay. When you’re playing a long game, shorter terms are negotiable, assuming the rules are the same.
And there’s the rub.
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Consider, if you will, the bizness-as-usual mantra of economic development as it pertains to a city like New Albany, and those demands for public assistance typically made by the likes of a Wal-Mart or TG Missouri. Watch the city’s economic development team (any of them, extending back to the Scribner Brothers) eagerly roll on their backs with these terms, amid those enduringly familiar explanations about spending whatever is necessary to lure employers to our fair city.
Now, think back to NABC’s sidewalk. In addition, since we’ve been located on Bank Street, the street has been paved, as was the alley. Conceding that asphalt isn’t cheap, at least the costs are spread out among all users. Even the sidewalk bump-out project itself, while obviously benefiting BSB directly, has commensurate benefit to anyone walking on it. Yes, we’ve gotten tax credits from the Urban Enterprise Association … but that’s an Indiana state initiative, isn’t it?
Hmm, what else? At last glance, we’ve employed people, paid our share of taxes, and helped draw visitors to a previously moribund downtown.
Those crickets are chirping again.
The point I’m making is that from an economic development standpoint, the city of New Albany has leveraged its blessed downtown indie “renaissance” on virtually nothing, compared with what it routinely spends on industrial park space and chain retail enfluffment.
In NABC’s case, this has meant a mere $8K for a sidewalk that had not been improved since Dwight Eisenhower was President, and some street paving that would have been done anyway. Voila! A cool million pumped into downtown.
Now, multiply these figures by the number of new businesses appearing downtown during the time that Bank Street Brewhouse has been operating – and don’t forget investments made before 2009, by since-departed pioneers like Bistro New Albany and Speakeasy. There are no handy reliable figures, and yet is $20 million dollars exaggerated? It’s likely an understatement, and virtually all of it has come from small, local, independent businesses … for the city’s price of routine infrastructure work that’s supposed to be happening, anyway, and often wasn’t in any timely fashion.
There’s another, perhaps more galling side to this viewpoint: How stupid have the entrepreneurs been, me prime among them, not to have behaved more like the Wally World predators, and less like simpering victims of the Stockholm Syndrome?
Inexplicably, we remain feral cats that refuse to be herded, even when our own obvious interests are at stake. Remember Mainland Properties’ abortive $15 million parking garage clip job? That’s a lot more jack than an 8K expanse of concrete, isn’t it – and Doug and Carl wanted all of it to go to one company, itself sans a cast iron pissing pot, but with the notable chutzpah to extort money it couldn’t even match.
How quaint of us to have been spending our own money on our own businesses. What could we have been thinking?
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Before the free-marketing Darwinians go all mental on me, rest assured that I’m not advocating a direct transfer of funds from taxpayers to my European travel fund. That’s because my being faint of stomach, the inevitable self-immolations might prove disruptive to the digestive track. Erika’s no prize without the lighter fluid.
Rather, it is my unapologetic view, and one that is far more representative of the new generation of business people downtown than those stuck ostrich-first in the rotary dial era, that the city can indeed help downtown entrepreneurs and indie businesses in a broader, collective sense by aggressively molding urban conditions, particularly the infrastructure, and specifically, the street grid.
When it comes to the downtown business community, two-way streets, traffic calming and greater walkability are enhancements to revitalization, not impediments. The city touts its responsibility to assist industrial park occupants by providing the “right” infrastructure, doesn’t it?
The downtown business zone is deserving of the same rationale, isn’t it?
Successive generations of political leadership in New Albany have neglected economic development in the historic core of the city. Finally indies and entrepreneurs took it on themselves to do much of the heavy lifting, on their own, with little more than verbal encouragement. Isn’t it past time for the city to put some real, substantive skin in the game – in a clear, real-world way that benefits the many, rather than the few?
Isn’t it time for the city’s economic development team to advocate publicly for what’s right downtown?
I think so.
To me, symbolism matters – but there’s nothing quite like a sincere, loving embrace, and we long to feel it.
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