10th Anniversary Post: Local Businesses

1271 1st Avenue SE is almost ready to open
(window displays left from a previous business)

Ordinary people, they're going to bring the good things back

Hard working people, they put the business back on track--NEIL YOUNG

Ten years ago this month, in June 2013, I was still excited enough about my new toy of a blog to see material everywhere. I posted eleven times: I riffed off a Political Science Quarterly article by communitarian scholar Amitai Etzioni, a new book by Cedar Rapids's own Rob Hogg, and an incendiary Scripture-torturing e-mail by Mike Huckabee. I made a playlist of songs celebrating urbanism, including "Mortal City" by Dar Williams, who has since celebrated urbanism herself with What I Saw in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician's Guide to Rebuilding America's Communities (Basic Books, 2017). 

In a post on June 4, 2013, I raised a question to which I've returned any number of times: Is there some inherent value in supporting a local business over a franchise operation? Intriguingly, the hypothetical situation I imagined at the beginning of the piece has become real! (Excuse me, while I attend to some much-needed and undeniably-overdue editing...)

When I'm at Coe, and feel the need to get out of the office for a cup of coffee, the choice is obvious: Brewed Awakenings Coffeehouse is just across 1st Avenue and offers an impressive selection of coffee as well as a nice atmosphere. Starbucks doesn't tempt me, as the [closest] of their stores is nearly four miles away. But what if the situation [were] reversed? What if Starbucks [were] right across the street, and the nearest local option was, say, Blue Strawberry downtown, which is over a mile from Coe?

As it happened Brewed Awakenings closed in March 2020, and now the three coffee shops within a five-minute walk from my office are all recently-opened national chains--including Starbucks! And though Blue Strawberry has also closed its retail store, I can patronize about a dozen independent coffee places in the core of Cedar Rapids. Even the closest of those is a bit of a hike, such that leaving the office for coffee requires a bit of advance planning, but I'm really convicted on this matter.

Ellen Shepherd at Loyola University, October 2016

I've moved towards a solid answer to my ten-year-old question thanks in large part to two women who have dug deeply into the subject. Ellen Shepherd, who spoke at Loyola University's Center for Urban Research and Learning in 2016, talked up studies that showed local businesses keep more money in the community, require less up-front government investment, and achieve these despite facing all manner of head winds. Stacy Mitchell, author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (Beacon, 2006), documented the costs to communities and even consumers of massive national operations like Wal-Mart and Home Depot. To complicate the picture, there exist nationally-branded cooperatives that are made up of locally-owned businesses, like Ace Hardware and (sometimes) Dairy Queen.

16th Street Dairy Queen remains locally-owned
(screenshot from Google Maps)

I'll be returning to this question soon, because I've been invited to speak on local economic development as part of the Insight series on "What is the Future?" at First Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids. It's set for Sunday 8/20 at 9:00 a.m. It may seem a stretch to get from Christian doctrine to the nitty-gritty of local economic policy, but the Bible has some things to say about our common life, as witness the two biblical epigrams on this blog. Stay tuned!

SEE ALSO: 

R. John Anderson, "Office Vacancy Chaos and Opportunity," R. John the Bad, 29 May 2023

Diana Ionescu, "Transforming Downtowns into Functional Neighborhoods," Planetizen, 25 May 2023

Stacy Mitchell, "The Real Reason Your Groceries Are Getting So Expensive," New York Times, 29 May 2023

Marcelo Raymond, "Will America Ever Change Its Urban Patterns?" Strong Towns, 30 May 2023