Letter: Downtown Needs Interesting, Family-friendly Businesses
Loose Goose Cafe. Photo: Yelp
I am writing as a home and business owner in Amherst in strong support of a 180 day moratorium on new construction to enable the Town Council to take into consideration the wishes of the community and the town’s Master Plan.
Arguments I have heard against the moratorium primarily focus on encouraging business in Amherst. As a business owner and resident who lives one block from downtown, that argument seems incredibly short-sighted and inaccurate. I have watched my family’s favorite stores and restaurants downtown close time and again in favor of more student-friendly expensive dorm-like buildings and stores, such as bubble tea shops. Gone are family-friendly establishments such as the Loose Goose, the Carriage Shops, Chez Albert, Amherst Martial Arts, The Mercantile, Worlds Apart Games, Bart’s Ice Cream, The Blue Marble, and The Pub. My kids and their friends used to walk downtown to spend their allowances, but now travel to the Hampshire Mall in Hadley for kid-friendly entertainment. There’s not even a place to buy ice cream downtown! Rather than benefiting from the proximity of living downtown, we now find ourselves in our cars again to find entertainment, restaurants, and other things that we want and need. I saw an article that recently suggested that if residents wanted to buy socks downtown, we would go to CVS. Really!!?? I suppose that might sound good to a student walking off campus to buy emergency over-priced low-quality socks, but that is certainly not how a family shops and I doubt that is how the author of that article shops either. Before it was forced to move twice and then evicted in favor of another 5-story down-like building, I used to buy unique and interesting socks at the Mercantile. It was a joy to have unique and interesting shops to frequent. I do not believe these stores closed because they did not have enough business. They closed because developers came in and bought up properties to knock down businesses and drive up the land and rent costs downtown so that Mom & Pop shops could no longer make it. Some businesses were kicked out with no option to renew their leases after residing downtown successfully for more than 20 years.
I strongly believe that tourists will continue to flock to Amherst if we can keep it family-friendly, arts-oriented, and interesting, as it has been, rather than an outcropping of dorms and a CVS along with a couple of food-court quality restaurants. The attractive qualities Amherst can offer are the generous sidewalks, green areas, unique New England shops, interesting restaurants of every price-level and cuisine, the mix of older buildings, historic homes made into shops, and unique sculptures, murals, and squares, including one with a fountain.
Finally, as home-owners, we pay premium taxes to live in Amherst. I am willing to continue to live in Amherst and pay those taxes as long as Amherst has a draw for me. When my neighbors become only college students and there are no longer interesting places to go downtown, I’m not sure why we would stay.
I strongly encourage our Community Resources Committee and Town Council to revisit Amherst’s Master Plan to remind themselves that Amherst is a community of families who value the historic and family friendly nature of our downtown. Catering to developers who want to increase their wealth at the expense of the 99% of us who moved to Amherst because we value the community we found here is not only short-sighted, it’s wrong.
Kristie Stauch-White
Kristie Stauch-White is CEO and Owner of FTL Labs Corporation
I wrote that article about the fact that you can buy socks downtown. The point of my article was that people like you who say they support local businesses but that the shops are deficient because one cannot buy socks downtown obviously don’t shop downtown like they say they do because there are five shops downtown where you can buy the coolest socks on the planet. If you truly do want to shop downtown and socks are your measure, cvs does have dozens of options. For fun Mercantile style socks though I’d suggest the Toy Box, Zanna, or Clay’s. For school pride socks go to Hastings.
There is a middle ground and yes most the unique places seem to be missing now. They have folded up or were folded up. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find a middle. Encouraging / requiring downtown developers to have retail space and encouraging town permitters to cap the types of permits they grant by category similar to the logout licenses . Possible tax break for Landlords who encourage small start up businesses to move in at a rent they can afford. That gradually increases as they build their business . I used to spend every day after school uptown and it seemed like we had an endless amount of options. That is something that is missing for my child. There really is no safe, fun activities downtown, cool places to sit and eat, definitely only a few options for very interesting things to explore purchasing. Hastings and the Toy Box but not enough to make families, teens go up town over and over again. WE ARE MISSING FAMILY FRIENDLY /TWEEN Friendly Retail.
I don’t see the moratorium exclusive of these other things. I do see the solution As the towns Responsibility Amherst needs to be ALL IN – as suggested above Proactive set limits and encourage growth. As a business owner I personally do not see our town as Business Friendly Anymore .
If we want to Bring Amherst Center Back to An eclectic Place for all of our residents We shouldn’t be discouraging development but encouraging the development we would like to see aggressively
Rebecca Casagrande
I am writing as a renter and broke person who would like to spend less than $1000 a month to live in a one-bedroom apartment in a falling-down farmhouse. We need housing in this area, badly. Increasing the supply of housing reduces landlords’ ability to gouge tenants, and yes, that includes the college students who are putting way more money into this community than they’re taking out. If you truly value this community, you will help make it possible for people without generational wealth to settle and thrive here – otherwise, it will wither.