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Closed: Why so many storefronts are empty on Main Street
Signs up and down Main Street pronounce businesses closed, for sale or for lease. A tough economy is only one of a long list of factors cited by entrepreneurs.
Paula Fortier of The Main Clothing Company has not only survived but expanded, due in part, she said, to good parking and customer loyalty.
Photos by Polly Keary
Editor’s Note: With this story, we kick off a series on the state of the downtown business district. In this installment, we identify some of the reasons stores have closed or moved away, and learn what successful businesses have in common.
Next week we will explore what strategies could help the downtown, including what government can and can’t do, what the potential role of the business community is, and what significant barriers to success exist. Lastly, we’ll look at what plans are underway right now that could turn the downtown back around.
For lease. To rent. For sale. Closed.
A walk down Main Street in Monroe is a walk through a commercial real estate bazaar. In just three blocks, there were fourteen empty spaces on the street level last week, most seeking new owners or tenants. Many of them, including long-time occupants Cinderella’s Closet, Mills Music and Spokemotion, closed in the last year.
There are nearly as many reasons for the closures as there are empty buildings, but among the factors cited most frequently are high rents, low business traffic, parking issues and in some cases, simply bad business practices.
On one thing all agreed; the downtown needs something to change, or it will never again thrive as a business district.
Closing shop
Julie Koppenberg pays twice the rent now than she did a year ago. But she gets a lot more than twice the business now that she moved her ornament and decor shop Glitter and Ivy from Main Street in Monroe to Riverside in Snohomish last March.
She was sorry to have to make the move; she said she loves Monroe, and it is where she lives.
But in the end it was move or go out of business.
“I knew the traffic was better in Snohomish,” she said on Wednesday. “It’s a numbers game. I have had 10 people in my door in the first hour this morning and I could wait all day in Monroe and not get that. And since I got here I have not had one no-sale day.”
Koppenberg isn’t the only one to find business difficult on Main Street. Current and former business owners cite a long list of reasons that stores have abandoned the street.
Jayne Morse has owned several businesses on Main Street, most recently the antique and decor shop The Golden Mean.
She closed that store this month in order to move into the old church building at Madison and Hill, which she occupies with three other antique stores as Abbey Antiques.
Business traffic on Main Street could be better, she said. But her biggest problem was rising rents.
“My landlords live in Hawaii,” she said. “My rent went up $200, and if I were to stay, the rent would be like, $1,600, and that’s a lot when there are this many vacancies.”
Rent costs were a factor in the closure of the Monroe Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center, which moved into a smaller and less expensive space on the second floor of a building on the other side of the street.
Another business owner said that informal lease agreements can be problematic; one business came and went in the space of months because of a verbal lease agreement that fell apart.
Many property owners said that the current Main Street parking limit of two hours discourages business.
“People are getting tickets,” said Morse. “We are saying, ‘Come shop Monroe but don’t stay for two hours.’ They gave a ticket to the one customer we had in January one day.”
Koppenberg agreed, adding that heavy afternoon traffic related to schools on Main Street getting out also put a damper on trade.
“A 3 p.m. you might as well close because of the school traffic,” she said. “That’s a big one.”
And it’s hard to draw customers to a shabby-looking downtown, said several people, citing broken planters and unenforced sign codes that have allowed plastic banners and windows crowded with signage to make the downtown look tacky.
Another thing that makes it hard to draw shoppers downtown is that there isn’t a consistent business mix, some said.
“One of the major problems is there’s too many service-oriented things on Main Street,” said Koppenberg. “If people want to come shop, there’s nothing there. There’s doctors, dentists, mortgage companies. The hard part is, you can’t say people can’t be in certain places, but that’s why Snohomish works.”
But there’s only so much you can blame on the district, said Paula Fortier, owner of the Main Clothing Company.
“You have to be in your store and you have to be open the hours you say you are going to be open,” she said, noting that she’s seen businesses fail due to inconsistency or other unsound business practices.
Some closures are related to the stresses of balancing a business with personal life, said Lynn Gose, who took over Christy’s Vintage Vault when the four partners who had previously owned it dwindled to one, who couldn’t manage it alone.
Then Gose had health problems and family issues, and the business also became too much for her, she said.
Some business owners retire, as in the case of Spokemotion, or get burned out, as in the case of Cinderella’s Closet, said Gose.
And the lingering recession is keeping shoppers out of stores, said Lana Stevens, who owns several buildings in the downtown, including the ones housing Main Street Books and My L.A. Fashion.
For rent
The recession has had another, less obvious impact on store occupancies, Stevens added.
“I have pretty much filled my buildings, and I have apartments, retail and offices, and I did that by making rent concessions,” she said. “A lot of businesses owned by banks can’t do that, because it’s part of the mortgage agreement. The banks control what the rents will be.”
The value of a building is based on what its rents are, she said, and banks are often unwilling to concede value, so they force mortgage holders to keep rents above a certain level, even if that means the buildings are hard to fill.
That means that people who bought buildings during the pre-2008 real estate boom are holding over-valued properties and are competing with other property owners such as Stevens, who has control over her rents.
That puts bank-owned properties at another disadvantage; they can’t offer informal arrangements.
One property manager said that he has a hard time finding tenants when he has to get a formal lease agreement signed when some landlords are content with a handshake.
But even owners who can control their rents are often unable, due to rising costs, Stevens went on.
“My water, sewer and garbage went from $12,000 to $17,656 in a five-year period,” she said. “My taxes on one building in a five-year period, this is with no capital improvement, went from $3,212 to $8,404. And the value of my property has gone down 15-20 percent. The landlord is getting squeezed.”
Furthermore, she said, banks are still not granting start-up to small businesses that might otherwise move into the downtown.
Staying open
The businesses that endure have one thing nearly universally in common: a loyal customer base. Fortier has won customer service awards for attentiveness to customers. The three Mexican groceries that have not only stayed, but in some cases expanded, provide a place in which Spanish-speaking people can feel comfortable, and in which they can find products specific to their native countries that they can’t find in other stores.
And the Monroe Barber Shop, which recently bought the other half of its building which until then housed The Chopping Block Tavern, has been in the same family for three generations and has served some customers all their lives.
Restaurants like Tijuana and Jeno’s make it on repeat business.
Thyme for Health has endured because it, too, offers products not available elsewhere, as well as a place welcoming to a culture of health-conscious people.
Having decent parking helps, said Fortier.
And owning your own building, as in the case of Lovers Naughty or Nice, or having a landlord who can adjust rents during a downturn, also helps.
But for many business owners, those assets haven’t been enough.
For Jayne Morse, the move off Main Street was simply a matter of survival.
“We’re just trying to stay open and in business,” she said.
Note: Next week, we look at some of the possible strategies for improving the business economy downtown, and what stands in the way.
Gerald Zion
January 29, 2013 at 2:44 pm
As an owner of rental Real Estate property, I feel these business owners’ pain, and I can attest to the huge advantage to owning the property mortgage-free. As a consultant to Personal Best Educational Services LLC just outside Monroe city limits, I want every business owner to realize that they don’t have to feel victimized, there are people ready to help. Now–it is also true that we in Monroe need to get our city managers to do more to make the downtown able to survive and thrive. I want to help, and I want our town to be economically strong.
John Stima
January 29, 2013 at 4:13 pm
I was on the city council for over four years and when I tried to address parking downtown, I was told that we have enough parking and that to expand parking would not be a good way to spend the tax payer dollars. Hearing this sentiment from many different voices, I determined that there was not enough support for more parking.
Monroe Resident
January 30, 2013 at 7:53 am
I live in Monroe but rarely shop downtown. Why? Railroad delays, limited time/pay parking, dirty/tired buildings, traffic noise, lack of shopping choices, no outdoor cafes, to name a few. In Snohomish, parking can often be hard to find but worth the trouble and it’s free. Lots of well lit beautifully displayed storefronts, river views, restaurants with outdoor seating, a “destination” city that makes for a pleasant weekend trip. Monroe needs to take advantage of it’s prime location near the river and create a new downtown core, that doesn’t depend on out of state landlords, with a boardwalk and outdoor cafes where one can appreciate the scenary. Only then will they come.
Jackie
January 30, 2013 at 5:20 pm
It all boils down to increasing customer traffic.
Partner with the Service biz to advertise, Downtown campaign,”Visit the store next door”, “You are Here, Explore More”. Banks downtown can provide display space..they get steady traffic.
After 3pm, sales traffic drops in Snohomish too.
Add Parking directional signage, arrange employee parking in empty Sunday or shared lots, add 30min spots, extend to 3 hour parking. Provide parking maps to customers in stores & on web.
By far Streetscape is poor, sidewalks, trees, planters, seating. Christmas lighting. There is no central event space,and it MUST be central! Consider downtown a Park for people to gather and enjoy. There is no other place that represents what Monroe is, then it’s downtown..take care of it first. Invest in it. Strategic Plan.
Most city events take place at Lake Tye..no help at all to business core. It’s incredible what can happen downtown, it takes partnerships, ideas, vision, city leadership and people excited to make a difference. While it’s a difficult time, maybe it’s the time to re-think the future of downtown.
Monroe Citizen 2
January 31, 2013 at 8:46 am
People want to go to destinations. Usually someplace where they can linger and have a good time. Downtown Monroe is not that place at the moment. It could be. It wants to be. But it needs help. There needs to be more for people to do.
The restaurants that are there need face lifts. I’ve been to old restaurants back east that were established over 100 years ago that were clean and hip. Ours are just kind of sad.
Parking. Make a lot somewhere. Something. Anything.
There is a State Route going right through the middle of the downtown. It devastates pedestrian traffic through the downtown. It devastates pedestrian everything when logging and gravel trucks rumble by constantly. This should NOT be where your pedestrian hub is.
A historical museum that is open at bizarre hours. That would be why it gets no traffic at all.
Downtown group needs to decide what it wants to attract in a downtown core. Art galleries, find artists. Antiques, get stores. Shopping, find investors. Adventure sports, get stores and activities to cater to that. Right now it’s a smattering of nothing specific and therefore of interest to no one.
Adjoining neighborhoods. So let’s say we now have the perfect downtown. People can park, gather, and have something to do. Folks have been enjoying some food, shopping and now go for a walk. They go two blocks off of Main and are now in a typical (and somewhat trashy) neighborhood. Any sort of special jive from Downtown is instantly lost. In order to make this truly successful there needs to be an effort to clean up more that just Main street.
Point is that this is a multi level complicated issue that requires most of Monroe to be behind. It needs the combined efforts of the business and general population. If that support is not there then we probably should not set expectations too high.
Dexter Taylor
February 6, 2013 at 7:56 pm
As regards the museum open at “bizarre” hours – the Monroe Historical Society is an all volunteer organization operating on a shoestring budget that manages to have the museum open three days a week as opposed to most area towns whose museum, if they have one, is only one day. We would love to be open every day – come on down and volunteer!
Monroe Resident
January 31, 2013 at 4:19 pm
Very well put Monroe Citizen 2.
The City had a once in a lifetime opportunity to create a new “core” for citizens to gather, walk, enjoy cafes, etc. However, that is now going to be a medical center and eventually a WalMart. I’m not very confident that downtown will improve when the city’s focus is on short-term sales tax income (ie., money) vs long term enjoyment by it’s citizens that would likely surpass, in the long run, income – as people from other cities drove to visit us for shopping vs the other way around.
MARK W. PURTHER
February 2, 2013 at 5:42 pm
Until the City of Monroe get’s a Mayor and city Council people that are pro-growth Monroe is going to stay the way it is and we will all continue shopping out of town for our good’s. We must attract the bigger stores to come to Monroe instead of chasing them away so that we can get the tax base that will allow the City to provide funds towards upgrading the downtown Main street area and then it will prosper also. Why is it in Snohomish County there are cities that are smaller then Monroe and they have adequate shopping stores in their cities?? what’s wrong with this picture?? it starts with Monroe city government to take a active role in doing something about this instead of getting the city into the mess it has with property they have not been able to sell for years and are paying interest on it!! I would consider that poor management with city funds.
John Stima
February 3, 2013 at 7:48 am
If people would quit bringing lawsuits against the city and stop all the appeals, maybe we could get some business moving and a rising tide would lift all boats. These law suits have cost the city much time and money.
Monroe resident
February 3, 2013 at 10:05 am
There wouldn’t be lawsuits if it wasn’t a WalMart as the cities idea of prosperity.