So the street closure last weekend kind of hurt us. It was one of the stupider things they've done--closing the street without anything happening near us. But it's only stupider in scale. Most street closures hurt us.
We were down about 40% from last year. Tom Bean at Dudley's also mentioned it hurt him.
In Sunday's paper the owners of Zydeco were mentioning that all the events were hurting their business.
There's always been an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with street closures among some downtown business owners. Most don't say anything so as not to rock the boat. Others have bought into the idea that these promotional events help business in the long run. (I disagree with this assessment, and have never seen any evidence it is true. Besides...downtown is already booming. I'm not sure we need to keep stepping on the accelerator.)
I guess my stance is--only close the streets for the most important of reasons. The 4th of July pet parade is a great reason. The Christmas Parade.
Also, try not to close the streets on the peak weekends of summer when we already have hordes of tourists spending money in our stores--try not to distract them, or point them in another direction!
Anyway, I wish someone could take the bull by the horns and write a nice, reasoned open letter to the Powers-That-Be who decides these things, and get what downtowners agree with it to sign it.
I'm not the right person to spearhead this effort.
It used to be that I couldn't get anyone to express their opinion on the matter, and at least now I'm hearing some other business owners express disagreement with the constant events and street closures, so maybe it will happen.
Someday.
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