“It’s been dead down here,” she said. “It’s like the ’80s.” Linda Torres, owner of the soon to be gone Book Barn.
"Interesting piece. In raw numbers though, it looks like more are leaving than arriving.
(SAYS: I Hate Too Burst Your Bubble.)
And some of the additions see, well...
A hat store?
Nothing but clothing retailers & restaurants.
I've seen what are the beginnings of that Blue Moon Marketplace, and that could be interesting. But the location?
Far & Away the most interesting quote is the highlighted one by Torres.
How bad is it Dunc? I thought I heard you rolling your estimates down over the course of this year.
Anyway, a decent piece on what looks to be a pretty heavy net outflow from the downtown core, with a partial replacement by some total noobs."
Duncan's Answer:
If you don't mind, a 'yes, but we're different answer.'
On a scale of 1 to 10 for walk-by traffic, Pegasus has spent most of it's existence at a 2 or less.
For the last three or four years, that shot up to a 7 or 8.
Meanwhile, the Book Bark probably has been in the 7 or 8 range for many, many years.
Now? We may have dropped to a 5 or 6 in foot traffic, and so has the Book Barn, probably. So while I'm still doing way more foot traffic than I was accustomed, Linda (Torres, by the way, not my wife-- already had someone make that mistake) has probably seen an overall drop.
We also have maintained the 70 or 80% destination by regulars status, whereas most downtown stores are probably the reverse of that.
You can sort of feel it, as I've said before, just by the number of parking spots outside that are open. I can sort of feel it when I walk to the parking garage and see the restaurants don't seem very busy. And there are still stores that I walk by every day that never seem to have customers.
Pegasus has gotten a bit lucky. Pop culture has surged to the fore -- the Iron Man movie being an example. I'm optimistic. We had a HUGE turnout for FCBD.
But yeah, our sales are down from a year ago, and I had been guessing that other downtown stores were feeling it. As bad as the 80's? Oh, that was -- shoot a cannon down the middle of the sidewalk and not hit anyone -- bad. If it ever gets that bad, most of these noobs won't last a month.
I have to say, I think the number of new restaurants and new clothing stores is simply nuts.
New stores don't mean much, except the the downtown is a desirable location. It doesn't mean everyone is thriving. Just that there is another noob for everyone that leaves. I don't expect this to change for awhile, yet. So far, I haven't seen any boutique location stay vacant very long on Minnesota or Wall.
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What I remember of the 80's was parking in front of my store to lure customers. Of playing cribbage on the sidewalk with Jerry of the Sole Shop.
One of the problems I see with the higher rents downtown is that is almost guaranteeing that only high end stores will go in.
But not guaranteeing that those high end stores will do well.
If you get the distinction.
So we end up with beautiful corpses, that attract the noobs. Failing upward, so to speak.
Blue Moon?
That appears to be a high end, what we used to call, crafter's mall. I thought those were gone from Bend. They usually colonize struggling downtowns, like Redmond, say...
Model is more based on mini-rents, which would seem doubtful with the high cost per foot.
I think, the huge space, will be hard to fill with viable spaces.
But then again, maybe there is a whole colony of 'high-end' crafter's just itching to sell their stuff -- and pay a huge dollar per foot rate.
50 sq. ft. at 4.00 a foot is still only 200.00 a month, much cheaper than anything else they could do downtown...
Anyone know how 'crafter's malls' are doing elsewhere?
P.S. I hope people don't mind my double posting -- I just know that some readers don't go to the BB2 blog because of the gentle nature of conversation over there....
In Corvallis we had a "crafter's mall" art gallery that closed recently. It was in a busy, although unglamorous, shopping plaza. Right next to a major chain restaurant.
To be fair, I don't know if they went out of business, or just moved to a hipper location (e.g., downtown).
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