Posts from — November 2011

Directly from the Newton Cultural Alliance…

The Stroll features one-night only sales, music, cold weather goodies, a community sing-a-long, dance, visual art exhibits and sale, dining and more!  Join your friends and neighbors for this exciting evening. Make it a new family tradition!

Ready for the holidays? The Newton Cultural Alliance’s Arts Stroll & Shop is making holiday shopping and spirit easy for you. On Thursday, December 8, enjoy extended retail shopping hours in Newton Centre while you are entertained by NCA performers and artists!

Small businesses throughout the City are celebrating Small Business Saturday today. There’s still plenty of time to get out and enjoy a little more of one of the things that makes Newton special – Our unique collection of merchants.

The following – received from Green Planet Kids (22 Lincoln Street in Newton Highlands) puts it quite elegantly:

“Dear Friends,

Today marks the 2nd Annual “Small Business Saturday” movement, which was created last year to encourage shoppers to support local, independent businesses. It’s a counterpart to Black Friday, which promotes shopping at malls and big box stores, and Cyber Monday, which encourages shopping on the web.

Shopping locally fuels the local economy, creates jobs in your community, and preserves neighborhoods.

For the first time since we started our business in 1990, there are several vacant retail spaces in the Highlands, and there has been quite a large turnover in the past year. Running a small business is very challenging, especially during economic downturns. We work very hard to keep our business healthy and strong, and we have been successful because of your support. We still love what we do, and we cherish our connection to you and your children.

Please consider spending more of your holiday dollars with us and our neighbors, and help strengthen the entire community.

If you see an item online or in an ad or catalog, call us first to see if we have it. We are stocked to the brim, with more shipments coming in every day, and as you know, we carry completely different products from those you will find at the big box stores.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving weekend, we want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support. Without you, we wouldn’t be here doing what we do.

Looking forward to seeing you all!

Annabelle, John, Besha (the dog) and our Wonderful Staff
Green Planet Kids”

The invitation comes from the Mayor and his Director of Community Relations, Sarah Ecker, but now it’s coming from us, too.  We’ll be at this Village Summit. Come join us at the Village Summit!  It’s at Newton North High School, 1:00-4:00 PM, on Sunday, December 4th.

Here are the details:
Join Mayor Setti Warren and your neighbors for a conversation about improving the quality of life in Newton’s thirteen villages. [Read more →]

Regular readers of this site will be familiar with our Village Business Profiles series.  In the profiles, we try to forge a connection between Newton residents and local merchants, especially the people behind these great businesses.  Maybe we’ve been too subtle, but the goal of these profiles is to help drive Newton residents to shop locally and to patronize these stores.

As Newton Villages board member Chris Steele noted in his recent post, small and independent businesses in many cities and towns are struggling or closing amid competitive pressure and rising rents.  The village centers of Newton are not immune to this trend.

As we head into Thanksgiving this week, advertisements for “Black Friday” sales are already all over the airways and in the newspapers.   Major retailers are touting obscenely early opening times on Friday morning – some even opening on Thanksgiving evening itself.

How’s this for a radical suggestion for this Friday instead of battling the crowds at some big box store?    Sleep late.   Walk or bike down to your local village center with family, friends, or out of town guests.  Explore your local merchants, and see the range of unique and special holiday gifts you can get without even leaving the city limits.  While you’re at it, why not stick around for lunch, coffee or a drink at one of the great restaurants and cafés in your village?

[Read more →]

Here’s the text of our opinion piece published in last week’s TAB. Although it has my name and John Sisson’s in the byline, it was a group effort shared by the whole Board.

The property considered for development at the Riverside station has long been an underutilized open industrial site situated at an important regional and economic crossroads.  The available access – by car, by local and intercity buses, and by the MBTA’s Green Line – offers an opportunity that has no regional parallel.  The site could bring many benefits to Newton residents: career opportunities, new neighborhood shopping and dining, and housing – all of which would enliven what is now a parking lot, MBTA maintenance sheds, and a rail scrap yard.

Given the site’s location between the Lower Falls and Auburndale neighborhoods, the development also has the potential to reconnect these two areas which have for too long been divided by both Route 128 and by the expansive Riverside T parking lot itself.

[Read more →]

Daddy’s Junky Music officially closed its doors this past Wednesday, shutting the door on one of the last truly local chains of guitar and musical instrument stores in the region. In talking about why this small regional chain failed, Fred Bramante (the chain’s founder) noted competition from online retailers as the prime reason. By buying online, customers saved paying sales tax (ironic perhaps as Daddy’s first store was just over the line in NH in a specific bid to draw Massachusetts customers for tax savings). While Daddy’s is more of a Boston institution, local Newton merchants like the Boston Running Company, Big Sky Bakery & Café, and New England Mobile Book Fair have either closed or are seeking to transfer to new ownership.

Yes, the economy is certainly somewhat to blame, but not entirely. And, since the UPS truck still drops off boxes from Amazon and Zappos throughout our city, what does it say about the commitment to our communities if we lose the merchants and stores that we love? How do we justify allowing the businesses that we wax nostalgic about to disappear?

Local merchants provide goods and services that we need and that are specifically tailored to the local market. In many cases they provide the essential foundation upon which the community itself builds. How many of us recall and treasure the bookstore, coffee house, diner, hobby shop, or even a record store that featured prominently in our lives?

Local merchants are active participants in the community themselves. They are as tied to the community as we are to them. It is much harder for them to pull up stakes and move to a different town than it is for a chain store. Since their success or failure is so tightly wound with that of the community, they are often exactly the ones most willing to invest in that community, through sponsoring local events and helping to fund things like local streetscape improvements.

Yes, the internet is convenient and cheap, but the community loses if that is the only place we shop.

So there are a few things we can do about this. Some of them involve changing regulations to try to either make things easier for merchants or to make it harder for chain stores to come into our village centers. However, this also seems to ignore the basic market reality of the situation.

Local merchants are only successful if people buy their food, services, and goods. Local stores are worth a second (or even a first) look. When you need a lightbulb, try stopping by Swartz or Waban Hardware. Need a book? Try browsing Newtonville Bookstore. The coffee and baked goods at l’Aroma are at least as good as Starbucks, and they have better teas.

Or better yet, try spending a weekend afternoon walking through Newtonville, Newton Highlands, Nonantum, West Newton, or Newton Centre and sampling the stores along the way. In between an excellent lunch and a few fine cups of coffee, I think it very likely you’ll find some new favorite haunts, and maybe even make some new friends along the way. And, you’ll enjoy yourself and help to maintain the village life that makes our city great.