Want to open a street level store on Main Street in Gloucester or buy a building? There are several available ground floor listings. What do you imagine filling these spaces?
A new Nail Salon is opening at 137 Main Street (formerly Koo De Kir and Toodeloos– before Toodeloos! moved across the street) so that space is out.
These open spaces:
242 Main Street – (former A Paine in Al’s Glass space after he moved from Maplewood)
232 Main Street – Animal Krackers space will be available one day as building is for sale
6 Elm Street (former Common Crow space) at corner of Main
180 A Main Street A (former Magic Scarf space) William C. Rochford building (Action Inc) Magicscarf 19 Pond Road was having a sale.
123 Main Street – (Kids Unlimited space closing)
8 Pleasant Street at corner of Main (former J Barrett & Co realtor space relocated to Main Street)
206 Main Street – (not available! former Cameron’s building was sold and will be redeveloped)
as a relative newcomer to retail in Gloucester, I hope that there is the attention required to these spaces so that more retailers rent or buy the space. It is one of the important ways to bring attention and revenues to Gloucester so it can thrive and benefit accordingly. If not, I am afraid that more retailers will leave.
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And please no chain stores, don’t let Gloucester end up looking like “Anywhere, U.S.A.” When I need shoes, a book, or clothes, I always go to Main Street to look there first. It is SO important!
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Greed is winning. Deep pockets are needed to be in business in Gloucester and mission driven visionary property owners are as rare as piping plovers.
A 1000 sf (very small) space ( think one floor of a smaller home)
25/sf = 25000/year
Properly proportioned Rent is calculated at 5-12% of income depending on type of business, so a successful business in that tiny room would have to pay $2080 rent and make between 17k (service)42k (retail) a month just to keep rent in line. If Retail, that means they would need $1600 sales 6 days a week. (Why would you ever open on Sunday?)
Let’s say 20 people shop your little store every day so they would have to spend an average of $80, without fail.
Notice I didn’t mention utilities or buying stuff you could sell, or paying people to stand there. They are paid from that other 80 or so percent of the income. Taxes, other stuff like that; also come from the same pot.
Did you buy 80 dollars worth of stuff in Gloucester even once this month? How many stores did you shop in?
Rents for commercial retail in Gloucester are truly off the charts.
Why do stores close? Retirement, exhaustion, other interests; those are good reasons to move on. But landlords that double or triple rents, make demands for payments outside the lease, and do no maintenance on their buildings, those are some of the unspoken reasons good healthy businesses leave our community. Those are real things that I’ve just described.
Less than 10 percent of consumer goods are sold online-even now, in the age of Drone worship. Don’t be fooled. Internet sales aren’t killing downtowns -rent is. It’s happened more than once in Gloucester.
It’s entrenched entitlement that makes it impossible for startups to grow, learn and build a customer base. The opportunity is there only if costs are manageable. A collaborative partnership between property owners and enterprise is needed, but we are far from that dream in Gloucester today.
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Here, here! I live it here, but it us really hard covering costs. Trying to make it work but we need a really special downtown, not a mall! (DIVA-161 Main St.)
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