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Not all gloom and doom: Downtown business owners react to recent closings

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Not all gloom and doom: Downtown business owners react to recent closings

Downtown St. Cloud saw three local businesses close last month. While several downtown business owners found the news disheartening, they were not surprised by their neighbor’s closures.

Coffee shop Oblivion Coffee Bar & Mercantile, self-pour bar Whit’s Craft and restaurant B Social all closed in September. The three shops offered varying levels of detail about their recent closures, including metered parking, old buildings and lack of customers. Several downtown business owners shared similar thoughts on challenges they may have faced.

Ashley Green, owner of plant and upholstery store Green Thumb Etc., said that although she was disappointed to see the businesses close last month, she was not surprised by it. Having three closures in one month may have been an unfortunate coincidence, she said, but she expects the rate of business closings to slow down soon.

“I’m not expecting it to be three businesses a month,” Green said. “Two of those three were brand new, and one of them underwent a remodel… All three of those did big things in the last year, so I think it’s a one-off.”

Newer businesses downtown face extra challenges in getting started, Green said, especially as less people visit the area. The ongoing controversy over parking meters and decreased foot traffic may make it harder for newer shops to get established, something the older businesses may not have to worry about.

“It doesn’t make it appealing for somebody to be the only person walking on the street,” she said. “You get invited to a birthday party and you’re the only one coming, you kind of don’t want to go, so that’s kind of the way that it feels down here.”

Books Revisited owner Jon Lee also suspects that decreased foot traffic may have hurt the three businesses that closed, though he is unsure if changing the city’s parking system would have completely solved their challenges.

Mexican Village manager Becky Ethan echoed the same sentiments, saying she was disappointed but not surprised by the recent closures. In addition to lower foot traffic, she believes potential patrons dread the hassle of downloading an app to pay for parking and potentially exposing themselves to credit card fraud, so they avoid the situation altogether.

St. Cloud is also losing out to other nearby areas that have competitive downtowns with more vibrant atmospheres and fewer empty storefronts, Ethan said.

“To be so sandwiched between all those little towns… that’s not helping either, so I think that’s why St. Cloud has to take a completely different approach,” she said.

For now, the St. Cloud Downtown Alliance is mainly focusing on hosting events that will draw people downtown to then discover new businesses, Director Rachel Lolmasteymaugh said.

As the organization has continued to grow, she said it will use its momentum to drive more customers to businesses’ doors while celebrating what is already present in the area.

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Lee is also seeking a similar approach. He worries that the frequent “gloom and doom” perspective on downtown businesses could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, he said the community needs to reinvest in itself and celebrate the things that go right.

“There is stuff down here worth working with, worth saving, worth preserving… I still think that downtown has a lot of potential, but I think what makes a really successful downtown is really a blend of all sorts of businesses, and we need to get back to more of that,” he said.

Lee said he sees the problems downtown businesses face, but as for his own business, Books Revisited has instead had its best year of sales ever. He attributes his shop’s success in part to having a more established customer base, as well as selling books online and gaining new customers thanks to social media users discussing books.

Like Lee, Green said her business is not going anywhere. Green Thumb offers three different services as a flower, upholstery and gift shop in one space, which she said has helped keep her store busy and stable.

At the same time, she hopes new entrepreneurs can move into some of the empty storefronts downtown, and that the recent closures do not discourage people from pursuing opening a small business.

“There are great opportunities in downtown right now,” Green said. “If you go in with a plan, and you take advantage of the resources and talk to other businesses that are down here and have a whole team of mentors behind you, there’s a lot of potential to be successful down here.”

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Teagan King covers business and development for the St. Cloud Times. She can be reached at teking@gannett.com.

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