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Empty spaces
As news spreads that yet another downtown business is about to throw in the towel (Brockstreet Music will have closed its doors by this time next month), you have to wonder if the recession is really over. In Uxbridge’s downtown, the Big Dig was supposed to be the Big Issue. Almost two years later, however, small businesses continue to struggle.
Of course, Brock Street isn’t the only area of town with empty stores. Hillside Plaza still has vacancies. The space beside Blockbuster has been unoccupied for almost two years (and one wonders if, considering the franchise’s problems, Blockbuster itself won’t soon disappear). Hallmark Cards across from WalMart quietly folded its tent and left town a short time ago, followed, to everybody’s shock, by a fast-food fixture on Toronto Street, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
But it’s on Brock Street that the problems appear to be greatest. J.P. Plank’s became the Fox and Fiddle, then O’Grady’s, then the King Henry Arms. The space at 66/68 had numerous culinary incarnations over the last few years; maybe a wool shop and kitchen shop can do better. We wish the latest pub beside the Roxy well in its quest to avoid the curse that’s lingered over that space for the last dozen years.
Down the street, the Cookhouse/Sanrash has been closed forever, it seems; the landlord could at least pretty up the door. And the sudden closing of Double H Cleaners after so many years seems to have had a similar impact; nothing is uglier, and spells trouble for prospective businesses worse than old newspapers covering the windows.
There is seldom just one cause for business failure. No doubt any one of the businesses we’ve cited can list a half dozen factors that have contributed to their departure. But among the proprietors we’ve spoken with, one reason keeps cropping up time and time again: landlords who just don’t care.
Almost always, these are landlords who live a long way from Brock Street. They charge unrealistic rents, they make little effort to make the premises attractive, they demonstrate precious little cooperative spirit to help their tenants thrive. And it’s difficult to figure out. Wouldn’t it make sense for a landlord to take a little trouble to keep his property rented? Is the Cookhouse building, for instance, really more valuable as a tax deduction than an operating business?
We have recently had a change of leadership not only on Township Council, but at the Chamber of Commerce and BIA as well. Perhaps this is an opportunity for some fresh ideas on how to solve the revolving door syndrome downtown, to create some incentives for businesses to fill the empty rooms, perhaps even to get the buildings out of the hands of landlords who have no stake in the prosperity of this town.
The Township’s new Economic Development Advisory Committee, before it looks at attracting businesses to build in our industrial parks, needs to figure out how to fill all the empty holes in the buildings we already have. Unless we do solve this problem, our economic image, now matter how many beautiful office buildings arise, will continue to be the old newspaper on the windows.
