Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Another community taken for a ride by Wal-Mart

Is the death-spiral of the Middle Class still mysterious to people when municipalities PAY to have cash-larded retailers come in to help shutter any and all local businesses?

Wal-Mart throttles South Milwaukee:

The city will spend $800,000 to clean up environmental contamination on the city-owned parcel. The city also will spend up to $1 million on cleanup work on an adjacent 6.5-acre parcel owned by an investment group, led by Briohn Building Corp., that Gatlin is buying.

The city's project costs could total $3.05 million. That amount includes $1.75 million previously spent to acquire and do earlier demolition and cleanup work on its 3.5-acre parcel, minus $500,000 Gatlin will pay South Milwaukee to buy that land.

The Walmart will generate $276,000 in estimated annual property taxes, which will be used to pay off the city's costs, including interest. Once that debt is paid off, the property taxes go to the city, its school district and other local governments.

Do the math. So much for sustainable communities.

Very, very sad.

My Economic Development Commission agenda items for July 26th meeting

I like to post my Economic Development Commission agenda item submissions here because often it's the only place I'll see them -- they often mysteriously drop off the actual meeting's agenda.

1. Locally owned business support/boosterism: I'm reintroducing this after having it batted away the first time I tried. We simply HAVE to demonstrate some manner of support for Franklin's locally owned businesses in the form of a card-punch program, "Featured Business" on the city website, etc. It's getting embarrassing that there is no city sanctioned support for the kinds of businesses that build strong communities and encourage further commercial investment.

2. Drexel Interchange Economic Mitigation: Discussion of potential negative consequences of the Drexel Interchange and actions the EDC can undertake in advance to mitigate those consequences.

Good news for fans of wine, beer, and fresh air

Local business THREE CELLARS had their plans for an outdoor Wine and Beer garden APPROVED last night by the Plan Commission. 

Perhaps a step toward making the old strip mall on 76th and Rawson a more pleasant place to visit.

Help support the Franklin Library at Pick 'n Save

It's a small step that can mean quite a bit to a crucial local amenity: If you take a few moments to register your Pick 'n Save Advantage Card, a portion of each grocery bill total is donated to the library.

Will Franklin cultivate and support local small business owners?

My repeated suggestions to the Franklin Economic Development Commission to construct and steer incentives to small, locally-owned businesses -- indeed, to give any sort of overt, structured support to local businesses -- has fallen on deaf ears thus far. 

Why make any out-of-the-ordinary effort to support local small businesses? A nice encapsulation appears on the New Rules Project website:

Local Character and Prosperity
In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.

Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local causes.

Local Decision-Making
Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.

Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.

Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America's economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.

Public Benefits and Costs
Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.

Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.

Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.

Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

Monday's EDC meeting includes the following agenda item: "Discussion Concerning Possible Incentive Programs for Development."

Though the EDC has been ambivalent thus far to my calls to create an overt program of support for small- and locally-owned businesses, perhaps "peer pressure" from nearby municipalities will get their attention this time around.

Cudahy, Shorewood OK aid to businesses - JSOnline.

Cudahy has created a cash and loan program that would give up to $57,300 to businesses, and Shorewood has approved a loan and a grant to help a restaurant move into larger space.

Both actions, taken Tuesday by the Cudahy Common Council and the Shorewood Village Board, are aimed at boosting economic development.

will give up to $57,300 in cash and loans to each of five small businesses that open on Packard Ave. Among the incentives that would be offered to the retail businesses: loans of up to $25,000 at 2% interest; matching grants of up to $25,000 to build or improve a storefront façade; up to $10,000 in cash to buy out an existing business' current lease so that the business can move to Packard Ave. Shorewood approved loan of $102,500 at 2% and a $50,000 grant to help North Star American Bistro move across N. Oakland Ave.

A Small Business Bailout--Maybe

From Entrepreneur Magazine:

For small-business owners who have run into financial trouble, a new Small Business Administration loan program offers relief. But the America's Recovery Capital (ARC) loan will only help businesses that meet certain strict criteria.

ARC was funded with $225 million to provide five-year, zero-interest loans of up to $35,000 per qualified business. To qualify, businesses must demonstrate that sales are down, expenses are up or they are having trouble paying current loans or suppliers. Owners also must provide two years of cash-flow projections and explain their game plan for returning to profitability.

The program is not for new startups--to qualify, you must have been in business at least two years, and profitable for at least one of the past two years.

The SBA is working on building support from banks, which get just 2 percent interest over prime and can't charge a fee. Many national banks that make other SBA loans declined to participate. After a slow first month with just $16.4 million in loans approved by mid-July, $96.5 million in ARC loans had been made by early October. The program runs until September, or until funds are exhausted.

Working with a participating community bank where you already do business is helpful, says Neal Gordon, principal at the loan-intermediary firm Business Borrowers Alliance. That worked for Jim Brunberg, owner of recording studio Mississippi Studios in Portland, Ore., which needed help paying a loan for an ill-timed expansion. Brunberg worked with Albina Community Bank in Portland, where Mississippi has accounts, and said his ARC loan process was a breeze.

Not so for Auburn, Ala.-based decor-store owners Ingrid and Frank Brown, who sought an ARC loan from a national bank in June after sales sank 30 percent. Ingrid Brown says the bank was making ARC loans mostly to existing loan customers and turned the pair down. They reapplied and were approved for only $13,300. They passed on it to apply to a community bank where their businesses, The Villager and Auburn Art.com, have accounts. They got $15,000 of the $45,000 they wanted.

"We still need money to buy merchandise for the holidays," she says.

In the same issue, From Entrepreneur Magazine identifies LOCAL BUSINESS as the 5th ranked hot trend for 2010:

Demand is exploding for locally grown and made products--which means more support for mom-and-pop stores. The dividend: For every $100 spent at a locally owned business, $68 comes back to the community. Only $43 recirculates from national chain stores.

The "buy local" ethos has its roots in the farmers markets movement: There are almost 5,000 farmers markets across the country, the result of more than 5 percent annual growth for the past five years, according to the Department of Agriculture. Nearly 60 percent of consumers say they try to shop at a farmers market. Wal-Mart and Safeway recently added "Locally Grown" sections to their produce departments, and the USDA launched a "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" marketing campaign.Programs that promote community shopping, like Buy Local Orlando, are also popping up all over the country. About 40,000 Orlando shoppers have participated since May. "We like to appear that we're not just consuming for the sake of consuming," says Don Boudreaux, an economics professor at George Mason University. "It makes us feel good to show that we're socially conscious." --K.O.

Read the rest at: A Small Business Bailout--Maybe and 2010 Trends