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Locally Grown (LoGro) Northfield Posts
Myles Radtke, a student in Doug McGill’s journalism class at Carleton College, has done a nice piece on downtown retailers in the current economic climate, titled As Economy Sputters, Northfield Businesses Tighten Belts and Push Promotions (PDF – full text below). In particular, he’s interviewed a wide variety of local experts and allowed them to speak their own thoughts on the subject. I encourage you to read it.
It’s been a tough few months for many downtown businesses. First there were high gas prices cutting into families budgets, then there were the street projects complicating access, finally there was the Global Financial Contraction challenging the minds of the best and brightest.
As Radtke found out, local retailers are seeing some impacts on their customers. Pinched in the present and worried about the future, folks are being more careful about their money. Radtke reports that store owners have responded by cutting operating costs, working to build other income centers, and trying new promotions to get people into their stores.
Not all businesses are experiencing slowing sales. Some are holding steady and a few are even up slightly from last year. However, Radtke notes that even these business owners have contingency plans in place, such as a shift from luxury goods to more practical items.
Many local experts who spoke to Radtke believe that the media coverage of economic set-backs, a steady drumbeat featuring sub-prime mortgages in California, risky commercial loans in Iceland, and a store closing in Northfield can undermine consumer confidence. Feeding the pessimism, they warn, can extend the recession.
Radtke ends his piece on a positive note. Entrepreneurs, like the downtown business owners he interviewed, run on optimism. They’ll continue to make adjustments, and believe that economic conditions, and retail sales, will eventually improve.
Griff had suggested that I close the comments on this post and send them to my previous post on the Deep Economy. I’ve decided that I disagree. I hope that the comments on “Digging Deeper into the Local Economy” will focus on ideas for shifting some pieces of the economy from global to local in order to benefit the Northfield community.
For this piece, I’d like to explore the impact of the media on consumer confidence and economic conditions. Do you think the media’s stories on economic events have an impact on the economy?
Continue for the text of Myles’ article or see the PDF:
In September, LG commenter Anthony Pierre kept bugging me to take note of what was happening with the recently poured sidewalk at the Carleton College corner of the intersection at…
Our guest this week: Rhonda Pownell, new Councilor for the City of Northfield for the two-year At-Large seat. She expects to take her seat in early December, as interim At-Large…
At Monday’s meeting of the Rice County Board, commissioners voted 4-1 in favor of locating a new Rice County Court Annex in Northfield. Rice County Administrator Gerry Wieirs made the…
Guadalupe Flores Calderon and her business partner Yuma Gonzalez Gonzalez have seen their enterprise double in size since opening in June, Calderon said last week, and the place does not even have an outdoor sign or full menu, but it has the best food, prepared by the best hands and with the best pressure cooker you can get online, visit website to find more.
Their Mexican store and deli has a name, La Vencedora, and most people are drawn into the stark-looking building by the smell of her cooking, Calderon said, or on the advice of satisfied customers. There’s some carb confusion about most types of Mexican food but it’s actually one of the healthiest around — so thank goodness it’s delicious!
The building’s previous tenants, a Quizno’s fast food chain and a restaurant called Wiggles and Wok, perhaps never did so well in the short time they spent near the intersection of State Highway 3 and 2nd Street* West, adjacent to the Quarterback Club, before closing. Calderon said she has had relatively few overhead costs so far. *I corrected this street address 12/10 4:30 p.m.
Update log: 11/12 8 p.m.
Click here to download a PDF file of the most recent draft of the annexation proposal
Brian O’Connell, Northfield’s community development director, offered to extend the amount of time the city would pay tax reimbursement fees to Greenvale Township during an annexation negotiation meeting on Wednesday night.
But, the township’s supervisors said they still needed time to think and could make a counter-offer.
O’Connell, who has been representing the city in negotiations along with Joel Walinski, Northfield’s interim city administrator, said on Wednesday the city could be willing to pay a fee of about $3,854.48 a year for perhaps 20 years, in an amount that would total about $77,000.
Rhonda Pownell said she wasn’t surprised to come out on top in a four-way race to fill an unexpired two-year term for an at-large seat on the Northfield City Council.
“I have energy and excitement and I’m encouraging others to come along,” Pownell said over a cup of herbal tea at the Bittersweet eatery on Thursday.
She took 33 percent of the 7,112 votes cast for that seat, currently held by Dixon Bond. Bond was appointed by the council after Noah Cashman resigned from the spot in July to pursue a job opportunity and care for an ill sister. Bond may step down early to allow Pownell to begin her work this month, instead of waiting until January when newly elected officials usually begin.
Pownell’s opponents, Joseph Gasior, C. Lynn Vincent and Victor Summa, expressed some surprise at her victory this week. Pownell, 37, has no prior job experience in municipal government and she has been a member of a once much-discussed group that sits in the audience during City Council meetings to quietly pray for the city.