Jan 27, 2010

Small businesses struggle on new faux Main StreetsBy Ron StodghillCharlotteObserver.com

The owners’ note still hangs in the store window, like a farewell from the grave. Posted in late November, the message reads: “To our loyal customers, After five wonderful years of fun, food and friends, we regret to inform you that CafeMia has permanently closed its doors and served its last scoop of Gelato. We will cherish the memories and sincerely miss you all. Grazie”

A few yards away, there is another vacant store and another note on the window, this one advertising 1,556 square feet of available retail space. Keep strolling and you’ll see more empty retail space, and empty parking spots, and store clerks trying to look busy. At the big theater at the end of the boulevard, movie titles read like double-entendres on our rotten economy. Now showing: “Up in the Air” and “The Lovely Bones” and “The Blind Side.” Coming soon: “It’s Complicated.”

Many of us were not prepared for this moment, to bear witness to a chink in Birkdale Village’s shiny armor. Spun out of rolling pastures in Huntersville, it seemed that it existed in its own parallel universe, that it would be immune to ordinary stuff like recessions and crime. It is Disney World for grown folks: There are coffee shops and bistros and clothing stores and kids romping around in the square. Nestled into it all are houses and apartments and meandering sidewalks that foster a sense of community.

For many of us who like to gripe that the personal demands of work and home pull us away from the community, the rise of a modern Main Street was something to cheer about. We like New Urbanism because it enables us to microwave that feeling of community, partly through its faux Main Street.

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