LIVE TO EAT: My friend Jeff Mease on Papa John, independent local business values, and the ideology of the cancer cell.

Strictly speaking, Jeff Mease isn't a hometown boy made good. He came to Bloomington, Indiana from Ohio to attend Indiana University, never left, and the rest is history.

Jeff and I were aware of each other for a long time, and chatted here and there, but it was only when he was a director on the Brewers of Indiana Guild that we had time to form a closer acquaintance. I have deep respect for what he's accomplished in Bloomington.

One World Enterprises is the umbrella for the local businesses pictured above, and to my way of thinking, Jeff and the folks who work for him are a wonderful, living example of independent small business success.

Today on Facebook, Jeff commented about the "Papa John" Schnatter situation. To me, it's an important and insightful riff, so with the author's permission ...

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Back in the early 90's I was upgrading some pizza dough equipment. There weren't many companies that produced the sort of mixers that make hundreds of pounds of pizza dough at a time. 

As it happened, the salesman that I ended up dealing with was an expert in the field, had spent his career in baking equipment sales and had sold the same sort of dough equipment I was looking for to Papa John's, which John Schnatter had started in Southern Indiana a couple years after I'd started Pizza Express in Bloomington. 

Having jumped into franchising early on, Papa John's was already a large and fast growing company. My curiosity about Papa John's meteoric growth was piqued during my conversations with the salesman, and near the end of a series of meetings I had the chance to ask the question I'd been forming.

"Bob," I said, "You've visited my company in Bloomington, met most of my key people and have gotten to know me a bit, tell me, what are the key differences you see between me, running this small and successful restaurant company and John Schnatter?"

"Oh sure," was his answer. "John Schnatter is ruthless. There's nobody in that company that was there at the beginning. I doubt there's anyone at corporate who's been there more than a few years." Bob's words from nearly two decades ago have always stuck with me.

Obviously, there are lots of customers who like what the papa does. But here in Bloomington, I've watched those franchises change hands numerous times. Their store management positions are a revolving door and there is no culture that I can sense, just branding, pressure and dollars, as is typical of the genre. 

Contrast that to Pizza X in Bloomington -- Papa John's most direct competitor. Our people are paid well and taken care of, and our managers hardly ever turn over. Each year at our manager awards dinner we're handing out service awards to managers and staff for 5,10, 15, 20 years of employment. One of our manager's is going on 30 years with the company. 

Pizza X employs over 100 people in Bloomington, 46 of whom are full time. We've had a first rate health insurance plan for our staff for many years (more than a decade before Obamacare) and it costs us less than 30 cents per pizza--WHAT AN INCREDIBLE VALUE. 

While none of us are getting rich, together as an organization we've created a great deal of customer value and through that a lot of good jobs, where good people can excel, and where all of us continue to learn about the value of service almost daily. 

I'm not trying to blow our own horn so much as to say this: There are different ways to do things, and the more conscious we ALL are about where we spend our money, the better world we'll create. Institutions and companies need to grow, we all need aspirations and inspiration, but do some things get too big too fast? Cancers and explosions come to mind. 

Visiting a friend in Freiburg, Germany a few years ago, I spent a beautiful fall afternoon at a farmers market that happened every day of the year but one, just as it has since 1514. At the center of the market was a cathedral that took 300 years to build.

An idea from Bloomington, Indiana: The Farmers' Market Advisory Council.

It's a farmers market Saturday in downtown New Albany, and as we've seen recently ... once again ... persistently poor communications in a time of rising expectations can be a toxic brew.

City Hall non-transparency yet again: Independent downtown businesses negatively impacted by Saturday farmers market street closing.

Mulberry House Antiques and "an encroaching Farmers Market.

As a Twitter friend suggests, we might look regionally to other successful examples of a farmers market for useful clues as to the constructive fostering of cooperation.

His example is Bloomington, Indiana. Note first that in Bloomington, the farmers market is operated by the parks department.

Then, expanding this example, ponder an advisory board in New Albany representing not only vendors and customers, but downtown merchants. The point is constantly made hereabouts that the presence of the farmers market is a boon to downtown merchants. That's plausible, and if so, wouldn't inter-relatedness be enhanced by including merchants in the loop of communications?

People say I'm a dreamer.

But I'm not the only one.

About the Farmers' Market Advisory Council

The Farmers' Market Advisory Council consists of nine members representing two groups, Market customers and Market vendors. The Council acts in an advisory capacity to the Board of Park Commissioners and Park staff on policy matters relating to the Farmers' Market.

Meetings are usually held at 5:15 p.m. the third Monday of each month in the Parks and Recreation Department Conference Room, located in Suite 250 at 401 N. Morton St. in City Hall. Advisory Council meetings are open to the public.

Applying the Bloomington solution to New Albany's farmers market.

From New Albany to Bloomington. Ninety miles, and at least that many years.

Let's go right ahead and spend lots of money on the farmers market.

But let's not do it at the current location.

Rather, let's do it in a way that has multiple uses and has potential ripple effects, serving higher purposes beyond temporal paybacks to the same old suspects.

Let's move it down to the city parking lots shown above, thus improving what frankly are perennial, decrepit eyesores. They'd be daily parking lots just as they are now, except on Saturdays and Wednesdays (in season).

Meanwhile, the corner of Bank and Market could function as a pocket park until sold some day for infill. The city's parks department could run both farmers market and the future infill pocket park.

DNA would be out of the equation, and could return to doing whatever it is that a New Albany Main Street organization is supposed to be doing ... like selling real estate in Georgetown and Jeffersonville. What it should be doing are things like this: Mission Pedestrian.

We'd be moving the center of farmers market gravity a few blocks west, which is good for Westendia. Putting some love into this area might encourage Schmitt Furniture to uncover its windows. Furthermore, there'd be a natural affinity between the farmers market and the forthcoming Seeds and Greens Natural Market and Deli.

It wouldn't be the parking garage, with all its nasty oil spots and shadows and spiders and snakes.

It makes sense to me. What about you?

Indie icons, Bloomington-style.

There is ecotourism, sex tourism, sports tourism, alco-tourism and perhaps even just plain tourism. There also is root-for-the-home-team tourism, and so understandably, Bloomington boasts quite a few establishments that vend Indiana University-themed wearables and souvenirs of seemingly infinite variety.

One such shop is on Kirkwood, and we usually peek inside to examine the close-out rack. By doing so, I noticed something different – at least to me.

Apologies for using all caps, but emphasis is required.

THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT.

Of course, Indiana University itself is the big kahuna, but here is an example of iconic independent local businesses openly declaring their status as icons, and justifiably so; think of all the former students coming back to the places they frequented in simpler times.

Indie icons. I like it.

On the farmers market in Bloomington, and how smart things make us look dumb.

Here's an interesting tidbit: The Bloomington Community Farmers' Market is run by the city's Parks and Recreation Department.

As I've noted following past trips to Bloomington, the farmers market takes place on the grounds of City Hall's parking lot, which as you can see, implies a commitment to multiple usage that died in New Albany shortly after the Scribners landed and began performing their unique style of Jimmy Buffett karaoke minstrelsy in the Ohio River mud.

It is striking that while we speak of ways to operate the farmers market in New Albany as though it were entirely divorced from the remainder of our downtown infrastructure (Bicentennial Park, Amphitheater, et al), Bloomington's farmers market is wholly integrated -- run by a city department, situated astride a bike path, connected in myriad ways with the city around it, and sharing a parking lot with the equivalent of our City-County Building.

As usual, I already discern the objection of the Know Nothings: But Roger, Bloomington is different.

If so, the primary difference is that Bloomington is smart, and New Albany is dumb. Really, really dumb. We seem to like it like that, so hit it, Joel!

If it suddenly ended tomorrow
I could somehow adjust to the fall
Good times and riches and son of a bitches
I've seen more than I can recall

Crosswalks.

In Bloomington, the big downtown pedway crosses a street roughly a block away from the farmers market.

It can be seen only partially in the photo, but there is a temporary sign in the street reminding drivers that state law commands yielding to pedestrians.

In my walks around New Albany, I see numerous places where signage and more clearly delineated crosswalks might randomly catch the attention of distracted motorists. It isn't just the ones rolling through stop signs and refusing to look both ways on our unsafe one-way streets. It's also the ones who see pedestrians, and continue on, anyway.

Periodic enforcement would help, too, as would the habit every two decades or so of actually charging drivers who injure and kill walkers and cyclists.

Heresy in New Albany: "Are Parking Meters Boosting Business?"

In the wake of a muddled New Albany municipal tradition of unofficial non-enforcement of downtown parking rules, the England Administration's hurried "solution" a couple years back was to officially muddle the non-enforcement regimen and (of course) declare its mission blissfully accomplished, which is to say that parking downtown henceforth would be entirely free of rules (and costs) even as police continued to issue tickets in other places, ones falling beyond an utterly invisible line that hasn't once been made clear to the public in all the time since.

Huzzahs were unleashed, red wine decanted straight from the box, and the Central Committee went back to millennial snoring.

Last week, Bloomington was in the news: Bloomington council OKs revised parking meter plan (Associated Press, via IBJ).

It's a plan to balance metered spaces with garage and "free" spaces, and by way of explanation, Mayor Mark Kruzan said something entirely unimaginable in New Albany.

"The message is not revenue, it's behavior."

Ye Gods, just imagine it. Actually thinking a problem all the way through, even if a proposed solution seems counter-intuitive at first, and stepping outside the self-imposed box.

Are Parking Meters Boosting Business? More evidence that business receipts rise with parking costs, by Eric de Place (Sightline Daily)

... How is that possible? Can higher parking costs actually boost business?

It may sound counter-intuitive at first, but on inspection it turns about to be totally sensible. By increasing turnover in on-street parking and ensuring that spaces are available for customers, well-calibrated parking policies really can increase patronage. (After all, would you rather grind through congested downtown streets in the rain while hunting for a parking space or pay a few bucks to stash the car curbside until 8?) In fact, boosting business is exactly what Seattle set out to do when officials adjusted meter rates and extended paid hours downtown.

Brewery at the Former Monroe Oil Bulk Oil Transfer Station in Bloomington, Indiana?

Not yet, anyway. Would anyone like to make $1 million by investing 10 million? Don't forget to not pay yourself.

I noticed this building last time we were in Bloomington, and received the information below from the listed environmental consultants. Whether for brewing or not, the site appears ripe for adaptive reuse, especially given its proximity to the B-Line Trail.

Fields Environmental, Inc. ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTING SERVICES

Brownfields IV, LLC
The Former Monroe Oil Bulk Oil Transfer Station
229 West First Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47403

This site is a work in progress. The original owner and operator was Standard Oil of Indiana, a company spearheaded by John D. Rockefeller, who constructed the building in 1918. The site transferred ownership several times and was officially closed in 2005. The property is delapidated since its closure due to minor fires, extensive grafitti and vandalism, and homeless individuals who have sought shelter in the building.

Just move it inside.

At the second edition of the Bloomington Craft Beer Festival on Saturday, June 9, the action shifted from outdoor tents to the cavernous expanse of the old limestone quarry's main building, which looks as though it was lifted from a Pink Floyd album cover.

The festival itself probably doubled in size from 2011, which bodes well for its future. Moreover, it was persuasive evidence of the possibilities of adaptive reuse. The building might not be usable for much else at this point, and maybe it never will be, but it was a roomy, cool place to stage a beer event.

NABC vs. Big Red: "You pay your dues and I'll pay mine."

(Warning: Indelicate language about body parts appears below)

Know that I do not sanction discrimination on the basis of color, creed, sexual orientation, physical characteristics or college basketball rooting preferences. However, I draw the line at assholes. All I ask is to be permitted to continue discriminating against THEM. Coincidentally, did you hear the one about Big Red Liquors? If not, last week's renewal of a long-running feud is documented in three posts at my beer blog, the Potable Curmudgeon.

1. Nine years later, and absolute power still corrupts Big Red Liquors absolutely.

2. Big Red's intent to stock NABC is an intolerable provocation.

3. Truce in our time.

Bloomington has a neighborhood parking ordinance, too.

How utterly strange that the stated purpose of such a measure dares to "protect motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians," rather than to auction an entitlement for chump change sufficient to make Steve Price orgasmic.

Damned pesky Obamunists.

Neighborhood Parking Permit FAQs

Neighborhood Parking Permit Questions and Answers

City of Bloomington ORDINANCE 92-06 designates University Proximate Residential Neighborhood Permit Parking Zones. Residents in those zones may receive Parking Permits that only allow the vehicles with Permits to park on the street between 8AM and 5PM, Monday thru Friday. Permits expire August 15, of each year. This Ordinance is meant to protect motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians from excessive commuter traffic competing for parking spaces as well as to reduce the amount of traffic in the neighborhoods.