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davis_squareREMINDER: WORLD OF BEERS would like to have a community meeting ON SITE at the former Social Security Building on Wed April 17th at 6:00pm(THAT"S TONIGHT). Will you come be part of the discussion?
I understand the debate going on for the SS space and the currently proposed World of Beer. While I support new businesses and restaurants to open in the square, I am not particularly enthused about another bar or a bar only type of business. If its going to be a restaurant space as they seem to be the only ones able to afford rents in the area I would much rather see something more on the lines of a full service/chef driven type venue. That's my opinion.
This is what got me to thinking, What can I do to get involved and what ideas can I offer. This is what I came up with;
Just throwing this out there for some feedback and ideas so please leave some!
I was thinking about pitching the landlord the idea of leasing the SS building and installing a co-op type of business. As a resident I am disappointed in the amount of real estate space available to small businesses for retail and want to find/look for a solution. Given the amount of help that has been given to developers in Somerville, such as around Assembly Row and the former Ikea site from the city I thought there must be a way to get this done.
The basic idea would be to create a shopping environment inside the SS building. Subdivide the space. Create a small network of stalls that could share the responsibility of the lease and benefit from the strength in diversification. The LL would get his market rents, businesses would get a chance and we would get some small unique shops.
Things I would like to see;
A few farm stands, this is similar to what Plum and Sienna Farms did in the South End
Clothing for men and women, I think a bit of density would be fantastic
Shoes? Not sure how this would work.
Some type of vendors for foods that are ready cooked so as to keep the buildout costs down
Art!
Antiques?
Services like cobbler, watch repair, keys etc…
Ideas of businesses to approach would be greatly appreciated. What places would make you visit them. Please keep in mind that in order for an idea like this to work there has to be a demand for the type of business and we, as community members bear the responsibility to patronize these vendors.
If this thread gets much traction I will begin to pursue this on a more active level. If not, thank you for reading and if you left some, thank you for your input.
I understand the debate going on for the SS space and the currently proposed World of Beer. While I support new businesses and restaurants to open in the square, I am not particularly enthused about another bar or a bar only type of business. If its going to be a restaurant space as they seem to be the only ones able to afford rents in the area I would much rather see something more on the lines of a full service/chef driven type venue. That's my opinion.
This is what got me to thinking, What can I do to get involved and what ideas can I offer. This is what I came up with;
Just throwing this out there for some feedback and ideas so please leave some!
I was thinking about pitching the landlord the idea of leasing the SS building and installing a co-op type of business. As a resident I am disappointed in the amount of real estate space available to small businesses for retail and want to find/look for a solution. Given the amount of help that has been given to developers in Somerville, such as around Assembly Row and the former Ikea site from the city I thought there must be a way to get this done.
The basic idea would be to create a shopping environment inside the SS building. Subdivide the space. Create a small network of stalls that could share the responsibility of the lease and benefit from the strength in diversification. The LL would get his market rents, businesses would get a chance and we would get some small unique shops.
Things I would like to see;
A few farm stands, this is similar to what Plum and Sienna Farms did in the South End
Clothing for men and women, I think a bit of density would be fantastic
Shoes? Not sure how this would work.
Some type of vendors for foods that are ready cooked so as to keep the buildout costs down
Art!
Antiques?
Services like cobbler, watch repair, keys etc…
Ideas of businesses to approach would be greatly appreciated. What places would make you visit them. Please keep in mind that in order for an idea like this to work there has to be a demand for the type of business and we, as community members bear the responsibility to patronize these vendors.
If this thread gets much traction I will begin to pursue this on a more active level. If not, thank you for reading and if you left some, thank you for your input.
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no subject
Date: 2013-04-13 05:28 pm (UTC)A fresh bakery would be interesting though When Pigs Fly is already a couple blocks down Highland and still more expensive than I'd pay regularly for bread.
For less frequent visits, Davis already has a comic store. A bookstore would be interesting in theory but really I hardly even visit the one in Porter; browse Harvard sometimes for titles to then check out of the library.
Not that I'm a modal shopper, but still.
Matt Yglesias argues that food and liquor really are the urban small retail killer app. People use them a lot and appreciate having them in walking distance, and if the market can support them we shouldn't try to discourage them. It's not like banks muscling into a cool neighborhood and killing off the coolness (Jane Jacobs example); restaurants and bars *are* the coolness.
"as community members bear the responsibility to patronize these vendors."
I don't feel any responsibility to do any shopping I wouldn't otherwise do.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-13 07:45 pm (UTC)Things Davis Square lacks that I would like to see:
A good photocopier available on Sundays
A *hardware store*
a florist
a computer/tech store of some kind
a crafts store
classes on X, Y, Z in part of the space
we already have a cobbler (shoe and leather repair), and a good one
no subject
Date: 2013-04-13 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-13 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-14 01:09 am (UTC)Speaking of food, one thing that we do not have here is a good quality pet food shop. There's Stinky's in Ball Sq - which is really great - but where else do people go to get food and supplements for their dogs and cats? Animal Spirit was tiny, but the owners were able to carry a lot of quality items (and their supplements were very good). Is there just no demand? (Because that would be sad.)
Of course, neither of these businesses have very high profit margins, so these ideas are just my own little dreams. And, as long as I'm dreaming, I'll throw in a local artists' collective...
no subject
Date: 2013-04-14 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-14 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-14 10:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-14 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-14 06:43 pm (UTC)What I think we're lacking most in West Somerville is some kind of community center. Maybe not in this space, but in the old Powder House school or something. Like another Y (that is nicer and larger than the one on Highland). Something that offers a low-cost fitness center, classes, afterschool and school vacation programming, and spaces to rent out for special events. In terms of fitness, BSC is way overpriced and Planet Fitness doesn't offer classes or anything for kids. There are tons of young families in Somerville and IMO there's not enough affordable programming for them. And classes are just awesome and help build a stronger community. Unless I'm missing something, we don't have anything like that in the Davis area, or in West Somerville at all.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-14 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-14 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-14 11:32 pm (UTC)No offense intended to the original poster or any of the commenters, but it is space. It's for sale. No one who has commented so far (apart from catling) has a business to put in. Unless someone watching this post is using this as an extremely small portion of their business plan, what exactly are you hoping for?
I'd love to see a lot of different goods and services closer than some we have now. What I'd like to see more is less interference via zoning restrictions and more businesses raising taxes for our city.
Star Market's old spot has sat fallow for years due to the city dithering of how the space should be used. I personally think it is much more important that space be used and bringing revenue to our fair city.
End curmudgeon mode.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-15 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-15 04:13 pm (UTC)The Social Security building is a much more suitable space for such an idea but I think it would take some deep pocketed, visionary developer, skilled in community relations, to pull it off.
Here's what my Bizarre Bazaar fantasy involved:
-a range of rental spaces of varying size (say 1000 sq ft down to stall) to enable one-off businesses, satellite shops, and art/craft vendors access to suitable/affordable space in Davis Sq.
-a central cafe with performance space for live acoustic music and spoken word events
-weekly/monthly retail and service events
----preorder food co-op type service
----drop off/pick up point for repair type services
-pick up point for internet orders
Living in Davis, I would welcome more varied social spaces which are not bars/restaurants (e.g. more cafes, casual performance spaces) and also more retail grocery. (McKinnon's is fine for what it is but it is pretty limited) I doubt though that foot traffic alone would support a market type of business.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-15 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-15 07:18 pm (UTC)I'm not sure there's a lack of space for small businesses in Davis. There have been a lot of failures in the down economy, and a lot of vacant storefronts have been turned around into new businesses. On the other hand, renting to lots of very small businesses instead of one medium-sized tenant could be more stable due to averaging, and potentially more profitable depending on the relative rents. But who is stepping forward to bet money on that?
There's not much you can't already get in the Davis-Porter area, and even less that isn't within easy biking distance or a quick T ride. Not within easy reach are things like:
* IKEA - too bad about the Assembly Square site falling through
* Container Store
* Outlet shopping
* Reclaimed building materials - closest place I know is http://www.bostonbuildingresources.com/ which is at least T-accessible
* Used bike emporium - apparently these don't really exist because local police are concerned about stolen bikes being resold
Those types of retail that we're missing work well with lots of floor space, but this doesn't really fit into a nice dense, walkable neighborhood like Davis. Restaurants and bars at least can be profitable with a small footprint.
Maybe the real market opportunities lie in doing something better (whether better customer service or in a cool niche) than existing vendors, or entering a business where the current supply is not keeping up with demand. At least at peak times, I certainly see retail overcrowding at Diesel, McKinnons, and BSC. (Not to mention government services like the T, RMV, and passport office!) Better grocery offerings are already on the way on the fringes of the neighborhood, so increasing the amount of drink-and-hang-out space does seem like a pretty reasonable investment at the moment. (Though Diesel it will not be.)
no subject
Date: 2013-04-15 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-15 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-15 11:44 pm (UTC)Some of us were here before many of the restaurants and bars opened and to suggest that we "should have already moved somewhere else" comes across as rather smug and insulting. I imagine you didn't mean it that way though.
The point is that residents *should* have a say in and be concerned about the development direction of where they live. And some of us are concerned with more than having another place to get a beer and would prefer things like places to shop for food and everyday services.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-16 05:19 am (UTC)What I think doesn't make sense is for the government to second-guess our collective choices, or for elected officials to pander to the loudest squeaky wheels. Then we'll end up with businesses that can't sustain themselves, because saying you like a business and actually spending money there are totally different. Remember Bowl and Board? I thought they were super cool, but their selection was always off, so I never bought anything there. I was sad they went out of business, but you know, I'm glad it got replaced by something other people actually find useful. (Another bar, right?) Sustainability is important; otherwise the vitality of the neighborhood will be weakened and so will its attractiveness to the largely silent square-going public.
I'll note we actually had another small grocery store in Davis Square that recently closed - Farmer's Bounty. Why did it fail? Was it badly run, or is there just not enough demand for that type of business here? Was it not organic enough, or just the wrong selection of items? It shouldn't be the Board of Aldermen who vote on that question based on the winds of uninformed popular opinion - as they say, government picking winners and losers. Some investors who actually have a stake in making the next business succeed need to do some research and test their conclusions in the market.
I'm glad there are long-time residents around, but many of them complain that this is no longer the neighborhood they knew and loved, and all the newcomers have ruined it. I expect and hope that Davis Square will continue to change and grow in ways I can't control. I hope I will like the result, because I also expect to be one of those long-time residents. But if I don't like the future square, I'm not going to go around and try and kick out businesses I don't like and make everything exactly the way it was in 2013 for my own personal happiness; I'll leave for the next place that most feels like home. Why should anyone stay someplace they can't accept for what it is?
I like this discussion!
Date: 2013-04-17 04:29 am (UTC)One thing I appreciate about Davis Square is that I can actually do my basic business there. I don't want my local square to be just bars and restaurants. that makes it only of limited use. That makes it a shopping center, not a town center.
My primary care physician is in Davis, as is my dentist. When I injured my knee badly I did a 6 month stint of physical therapy with a place in Davis. Personally, the chiropractors there don't work for my back issues, but the massage therapy works does. I see movies ad shows there. So what other business do I need on a regular basis and go elsewhere for?
-Art Supplies. I'm a visual artist, I need paper, paint, ink, etc. No Michaels doesn't even sort of cut it. They do not sell the professional level supplies I need. I've left there empty handed too often, then still needing to go to Central square. A silent moment for how awesome it would have been to have Bob Slate move in... then on to thinking Artist and Craftsman, or Dick Blick...?
-Office Supplies. As an artist, I an also small business owner. I need paper, envelopes, printer cartridges, etc. I sometimes need to make over-size copies and the UPS store closes early. A Fed-Ex/Kinkos here would serve me as a resident far better than the UPS store can. The city is interested in continuing to attract the film industry, and having a Fed-ex/Kinkos would help with facilitating that desire.
-I go to Harvard Square when I need to deal with my cell phone, like replace a -dead one, buy accessories for it. T-Mobile or ATT could easily afford Davis rents and provide a real service. (The place up Holland that had signs in their window is not really a t-mobile dealer, just a re-seller with limited ability to do anything.)
-Groceries. Shaws is a giant monopoly, but i like options. Trader Joes is not in practical walking distance for me. It's a pleasant walk there, for the pleasure of a walk, but in the after-work, pick up something to take home for dinner it takes WAY too long to walk there and back to make it work. Stopping in Trader Joes after work, or before work, would be brilliant. The one on Newbury Street does fine with no parking, so there's precedent.
-Someone mentioned clothes and shoes. That could be helpful.
-A hardware store. Tags is good, but also limited. Somethings they just don't have. Plus having two, a little distance apart would be great.
-I wish we had good used bookstore. I know these are struggling and dying and almost certainly can't make it in Davis, but I really loved browsing Macintyre and Moore between dinner and movie, or after dinner on a night too cold to sit out side.
More ideas? Is it possible for the city to *invite* a business? Is there a process for that? I hope there is!
What is a Community, then?
Date: 2013-04-17 05:16 am (UTC)What makes a place feel like Home to you, then? Do you just up and leave a place and hope the next one will feel better? and the next? and the next? When do you stop letting yourself be pushed out of your home? When do you say "This is my home, I know my neighbors. I shovel their walks when they're sick or out of town. I get out of bed to jump-start my neighbors car for her so she can take her baby to their appointment. I get some say into what this place is!" ?
To be happy to sit back and let "market forces" decide what is and is not in the heart of your community, raises the question of what does "community" even mean?
The point of good governance isn't to "second guess" the will of the people, but to gather the voices and will of the people in advance and PLAN and make good long-term strategies. We have over 3,000 years of experience living in cities. We can do better than trial-and-error. A rapid cycle of businesses setting up, hiring people, then failing is bad for everyone. It leaves a destructive wake behind it and does not build the relationships that make a place a Neighborhood.
The other point of a democratic government is to make sure that all citizens have a voice. Voting with your dollars works very well for the people with the most dollars. With those dollars they can raise the cost of "voting" and fewer and fewer people get a voice any more. And the people with the most dollars to make decisions are not going to be actual people. They're going to be the outside chains with no ties in or interest in the community. If the game is "voting with dollars" they have more dollars than we do in Somerville, and Somerville loses.
If property owners are free to rent to the highest bidder with no oversight from the community, then the landowners, who are not necessarily part of the community, and outside businesses who definitely aren't, can dictate what a place is and becomes based on what is profitable and beneficial to them. It is a wholly false and ridiculously ignorant notion to imagine that if a business is bad for a neighborhood or community or place, it will fail and one that is better for the neighborhood will move in. It is only if the overall business model doesn't work that it fails. But the overall business model is often at odds with the model of what makes a good City, Square, Neighborhood, or 'Ville.
Our markets work on quarterly profit statements. Homes and communities, places where you know the people on the street, and wave and say hi, take years to build. A business can come in, reap all the profit there is to be made by destroying all the smaller, local businesses. Then when that kills an area, and no one will shop in their store anymore, they fail and fire everyone who had jobs there and close their doors. The system works like that, yes. But it doesn't harm a national chain to have a store last for three years or five years, just long enough to wipe out everything local, salt the earth, then move on. Who it hurts is the people and the community that it destroyed.
Instead the process will go the way you described--- something is good for business but bad for the PEOPLE who make the area. But the people are powerless against large, harmful businesses if the game is only vote with your dollars. Some people say "oh, well, the people with the money didn't care about me, I guess I'll just move on to someplace else and hope that they people with the money there suit me better." Other people don't have job mobility that lets them just "find a new place." They have kids in schools, they have neighbors, elderly they care for, so they stay and have fewer ways to do business in the square. They drive someplace else for business and the square collapses financially.
I'm not making this up. This is History of American Cities Since the 1960s. It's hurtful and harmful to people and places, and great for very large profitable corporations.
And it's a shitty way to live.
And we can do better.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-17 05:51 am (UTC)"Oh, I just *love* living next door to a hotel!" said nobody ever about their neighborhood.
And the businesses a hotel supports are not the same ones someone who lives someplace needs. Who goes on vacation and goes to the dentist? or even sees a movie?
no subject
Date: 2013-04-17 05:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-17 05:57 am (UTC)Why is that worse than pandering to people with the deepest pockets?
no subject
Date: 2013-04-17 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-17 03:10 pm (UTC)Where can I buy shoes or men's clothes anywhere in Davis or Porter? (New, not used.)
no subject
Date: 2013-04-17 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-17 08:29 pm (UTC)I think the problem that I have with *how* the city is "curating" the businesses in Davis is that they're not using any well-defined metrics for how to address this problem. At least that is my outside-looking-in perception. I see broad-brush assumptions that national chains and franchises are inherently bad, or that "drinking holes" are bad for the community. The dialogue needs to shift from these broad comments to ones specific to these businesses. Does WoB meet a need? The wait times at Redbones and Foundry suggest yes. Is it detrimental to the community? Not if operated legally, and there's no reason to think it won't be.
I'm also a bit miffed that the city is reluctant to give the benefit of the doubt to new businesses. I find it *extremely* presumptive that the city can predict the forward-looking needs of the community and the forward-looking performance of a potential business with such certainty that it is so willing to dictate which stores may open. If a new business isn't demonstrably detrimental, as opposed to simply falling short of utopian, the city should give it the benefit of the doubt imho.
There's a reason that large corporations are profitable: they offer customers a combination of products, prices, service, and convenience their customers like. Profits don't come from the corpses of vanquished competitors--they come from customer dollars! A business simply isn't going to simultaneously reap huge profits and drive its customers away.
Like I said, I agree that the government should have a role in directing economic development. But generally I think Somerville's heavy-handed approach suggests false omniscience.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-17 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-18 01:38 am (UTC)IIRC, both Ace Wheelworks (which is apparently barely on the Somerville side of the line) and Cambridge Bicycle told me that by police request they only deal in used bikes that were brought in by their owners for repair but ended up not keeping for some reason, not unsolicited sales. You can go to REI in Harvard and test ride any kind of bike you can think of, but all of the stores I could find in Greater Boston as far out as southern NH had only a very small used selection. I had much better luck with end-of-season selloffs at rental shops, but ended up driving 90 miles to actually buy my last bike. Next time my bike is lost I'll have to visit Bike Boom; I hope they keep expanding. Don't know if something that would truly befit the title of "emporium" would fit in the heart of Davis.
As for men's clothing, apparently there is a boutique in the Henderson Carriage Building called Drinkwater's. Personally, I'm not a boutique shopper; I tend to frequent low-end stores with large selection like Target, Old Navy, and H&M. If you put one of those in Davis I'm sure I'd buy stuff there, but the footprint is way too large for the neighboorhood. But it's really easy to bike or bus or T to all of those places already, so I don't really feel a need. Completely contradicting myself, a steampunk men's boutique in Davis would be completely awesome and I might even be tempted to buy an overpriced somethingorother.
Shoes! You can get those on Mass Ave at Sudo Shoes (I always want to shout "sudo make me a sandwich!" when I pass by) or Cambridge Clogs. Those are pretty boutique as well. I think for mainstream success you once again need square footage. It's pretty easy to find that in Medford (my favorite is Off Broadway Shoes, but there are more in Wellington Circle and at the Meadow Glen Mall) and Downtown Crossing (everything from multi-brand DSW to single-brand Sketchers). Maybe there's room for more, but personally I don't feel a shortage of retail space. (Not saying I'm pleased with the selection of affordable awesome men's shoes compared to women's, but that's a different problem.)
Ooo! Two other small-footprint things we don't have are:
* Someplace you can take your stuff that will sell it on eBay for a small commission. Does that exist anywhere, or does the self-service nature of the site completely kill that business model? Davis seems tech-friendly enough to support that sort of thing, but maybe it's the technology-fearing masses who would actually need it.
* 3-D print shop that you can go to get things fabricated. Now *that* is going to be the retail of the future. Not sure the world is ready for this yet, but a small group of folks with the right skills might be able to get a foothold in a neighborhood like this which likes both technology and art.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-18 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-18 01:50 am (UTC)All good points, but there are plenty of complainers for whom none of those are really impediments to moving, other than missing out on commiserating with like-minded curmudgeons about how too many of their old friends have moved away. Well, also in gentrifying neighborhoods like Davis I suspect more people have trouble affording *not* moving. That I can sympathize with, but my beef is with those who are unwelcoming of cultural change for its own sake.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-18 02:18 am (UTC)Public participation in public planning is awesome, but the danger of being beholden to the people who "make the effort to show up and speak up" is wasting resources on bad ideas supported by a small number of vocal people. Politicians don't have much of an incentive to tell anyone that their ideas are bad, but businesspeople do have a strong incentive not to invest in bad ideas.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-18 03:02 am (UTC)I'm not really interested in getting to know my immediate neighbors just because they live there; I'm more comfortable in the anonymity of a crowd and want my neighbors to please mind their own business. I have a lot of friends in Somerbridge but I don't often see them just walking around town; I see them when we intentionally get together.
As for replacing free-market business creation and destruction with government planning, well to put it bluntly, that's socialism - a command economy. I'm all for socialism when it comes to health insurance and transportation infrastructure, but our "3,000 years of experience living in cities" shows that retail command economies don't work. When governments try to plan in too much detail like that, unfortunately the incentives are misaligned and you end up with irrational use of resources because a plane ticket is cheaper than a cab ride (the situation in Moscow before the breakup of the Soviet Union) or insanity like paying ~$1000 and waiting something like 4 months to get a landline installed (the situation in Brazil before privatization).
World of Beer is not going to wipe out anything but other beer joints that aren't as good. Turnover of restaurants every few years is sign of a healthy local economy; otherwise, bad restaurants would never go away. We've had a lot of food establishments in Davis fail during the down economy, and they've been replaced by new ones. Yay! Down with the mediocre and up with the new and improved! Besides, people's tastes change. Remember when cupcakes were the new thing, and now we have all these cupcake stores? That trend's not going to last forever, and we don't want the government saying we have to keep a not-so-kickass cupcake store for the next 25 years when something else would be more successful in that space.
Davis Square is considerably less "shitty" than the 1960s, so you must be going on about someplace else. Sure, the availability of cars and suburban land put a huge dent in urban core economies. But downtown Boston is part of the urban renaissance that started in the 1990s as that trend started to slosh back the other way, and the Davis economy is being pushed up by the gentrification of real estate emanating from Harvard Square and is benefitting from being part of the Red Line corridor. What exactly are we supposed to mourn the loss of here?
no subject
Date: 2013-04-18 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-19 04:55 pm (UTC)