Fostering Local Businesses, a local radio program

Yesterday, a couple people sent me notice about a segment on the Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU-FM, on "Fostering Local Small Businesses." I wasn't able to listen to show (I got to work late and then my boss came in, and I had to give her full attention) but with the power of the Internet and web-based broadcasting, I am listening to it now...

You can too.

The guests were Michael Shuman, author of The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition, Manny Hidalgo, Executive Director, Latino Economic Development Corporation, and Harriet Tregoning, Acting Director, D.C. Office of Planning.

As I point out from time to time, there is a big difference between "economic development" and "building a local economy." That's what the program is about.

One example he starts with is comparing a chain bookstore vs. a local bookstore. A local store recirculates locally almost 40 cents of each dollar spent, while the Borders store only spends 13 cents of each dollar locally, mostly on personnel, not on local advertising, printing, etc.

The study Shuman talks about on the radio is one I've probably mentioned before, is this one, Economic Impact Analysis: A Case Study--Local Merchants vs. Chain Retailers (Austin, TX).

Civic Economics did a similar study in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago.

Right now, about 13 minutes into the program, Shuman is saying something I've been saying since 2002--he compares the money spent on the DC Dept. of Small and Local Business Development, $1.5 million (although this will go up because Restore DC, the parent of the DC Main Streets program, is moving into this department), to shopping centers that are receiving 30 to 50 times this amount. (In 2002, I compared total funding for DC Main Streets to one of my favorites, the Brentwood Shopping Center. Needless to say, Brentwood received many times the amount of funding as all the individual Main Street programs.)

Also, at a Brookland Main Street meeting Monday night, we learned that Brookland's own Yes! Organic Market is the only grocery that has qualified for tax incentives provided to all newly opened supermarkets. The legislation was passed in 1999! And since then a number of new supermarkets have opened in the city.

I can think of at least three: Whole Foods on P Street NW; Giant at Tivoli Square; Giant at Brentwood.

But apparently it's very difficult to see the process through, and the city hasn't really developed all the procedures to follow through on the law. (See Supermarket Tax Incentive Amendment Act of 1999, Bill 13-88 from DC Watch.)
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It is kinda aggravating listening to this. I have been working and writing about these issues locally for 7 years. DC is launching a retail action agenda next month. And I guess maybe I have influenced this a wee bit, given that I comment about this all the time.

But the issue isn't "leakage" so much as it is rebuilding the infrastructure that supports the stabilization, maintenance, development, and expansion of local retail.

This is more important than identifying the market capacity or the District's "retail potential."

See this national best practice model: Historic Downtown Los Angeles Retail Project

and this publication: Challenges of the Future: Rebirth of Small Independent Retail.

And speaking of best practices, we need a Metropolitan DC merchants association, on the scale of Retail Merchants Assn. of Greater Richmond or the Illinois Retail Merchants Association.