Benjamin Franklin said, “Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.”
Change is inevitable and I’ve seen lots of it throughout my life. My experience with change has been that approximately 90% of it is just different; it’s not positive or negative its just another way of doing things. It may come about with great fanfare, touted as the next best thing since sliced bread but at the end of the day it’s not better it’s just new. Roughly 6% of change clearly makes things worse, perhaps it was initiated with the best of intentions of improving things but matters went awry and, in my experience, only about 4% of change has been truly transformative and positive.
When my great-grandmother was a child, retailing was done by individuals who honed their skills over years of working in that particular field. They started as apprentices to a skilled craftsman, learned the trade then struck out establishing businesses of their own. Each shop had its particular specialty; there were no department stores and certainly no malls.
When my grandmother was a young wife her marketing consisted of going to the dairyman for milk and cheese, the butcher for meat, the produce man for vegetables and fruits and the dry goods store for things like laundry powder. There were no supermarkets. There was the iceman and door-to-door salesmen. There were Main Streets and independent business people and just a few chain stores like JC Penney’s.
When my Mom became a wife and then a mother, the age of the strip mall had begun. Shortly after that, the enclosed mall became the thing and eventually retail spaces would grow into behemoths like the Mall of America. Individual craftsmen, for the most part, were no more. Many individual businesses were consolidated into markets (the dairyman, produce person and butcher of old for example were subsumed into the grocery store) and department stores. Chain stores and franchisees were everywhere. However, the Internet and on-line retailing still lay in the future.
Now the retail landscape is very different. Main Streets are struggling. Malls are dying. E-commerce is king with international supply chains, 24/7 retailing, fast and often-free delivery and all the rest, which prompts the question, what’s next?
Mitchell has been rocked by change; the vast majority of it lately is clearly negative. Major retailers like Sear’s, JC Penney, Kmart and Shopko have left town or are out of business entirely. Iconic enterprises, places that have been in business in town for years are disappearing for various reasons; The Reader’s Den, The Framer, The Little Red Hen, The Toggery, Ben Franklin, Chef Louie’s, Overtime (once known as Doc and Eddy’s), Fanny Horner’s, the Ramada (the former Holiday Inn), a dollar store, all brick and mortar video/movie rental stores as well as tourist attractions like the Balloon Museum and Doll Museum have all ceased to exist and the list goes on.
There are empty storefronts up and down Main Street and all around town. What are the City of Mitchell and the Chamber of Commerce going to do about it?
Here are some suggestions; first, use the lot at 3rd and Main as a tourist plaza. Place a Conestoga wagon, a teepee and some saddled horse statutes there for a photo opportunity. Have a permanent plaque outlining the Native-American heritage of South Dakota generally and Mitchell specifically there. I know from personal past experience working at the Corn Palace that tourists are hungry for this kind of thing. Having the plaza there would also encourage tourists to venture farther south down Main Street with, hopefully, a positive impact on business traffic and profits for those downtown retailers.
Second, position mini Cornelius’ like the one outside the Corn Palace around town painted in various ways and styles. For example, one could be placed outside a business that deals with weddings and be painted in a tuxedo. Then, at the Corn Palace, have “bingo” cards that tourists could get punched or stamped by an adjacent local business when they located the various Cornelius’ at places around town for a small token prize to be given upon return to the Corn Palace. That would get more people up and down Main Street and all around town and may lead to some patronage for local businesses that tourists may not otherwise visit.
Organize “entrepreneur incentives” for new businesses that occupy empty storefronts. That could include a mentorship program where an established business owner, or a successful now retired former entrepreneur, is available to advise and counsel a new business owner. Long time successful Main Street merchants like Ed Anderson (Ed’s Pet World) and Lee Michaels (proprietor of the Toggery) could be asked to put together a manual of do’s and don’ts, tips and the like for operating successfully on Main Street that could be distributed to those seeking to start new businesses downtown. The City could establish a property tax amnesty program for the first few years of an enterprise that sets up shop in an empty property. Most of the City’s revenue comes from sales tax anyway and this would be a small investment to improve the look of the City, boost business and give a small leg up to a beginning businessperson.
Years ago, when I was still teaching and on the Mitchell City Council, a colleague of mine criticized me because the City didn’t recruit HyVee to Mitchell. At that time Kmart was still in operation and they had groceries, as did Coborn’s, County Fair, Walmart and places like Rob’s Short Stop. I think it’s right that the Chamber and the City not engage in the recruiting of direct competitors to existing local businesses. However, recruitment efforts need to be stepped up to get other businesses to relocate here, expand here and/or incubate here.
The City and the Chamber have a choice in 2022. They can continue to operate on autopilot hoping for the best while the worst happens all around them or they can sit down and actively plan for what’s next. What’s it going to be?