Mar 13, 2011

Downtown Hickory Welcomes New BusinessesBy John Dayberrywww2.HickoryRecord.com

Hickory–When Julia Rush opened a fine crafts store on Union Square three decades ago, the downtown retail landscape looked a lot different than it does today.

“There were still department stores like Spainhour’s and men’s and women’s clothing stores like West Deal and Colony Casuals,” said Rush, now retired, but still a downtown proponent and property owner.

“The big stores are gone. We can’t go back to what we used to be. Everything evolves and changes. And that’s OK.”

Rush and others with a longtime stake in the district say it is becoming exactly what a consulting firm several years ago said it would become: an area dominated by restaurants and independently-owned retail boutiques.

“There’s nothing wrong with having lots of restaurants and small stores,” Rush said.

“You come downtown now, day or night, and you’ll see 30 or 40 or 50 people on their way to one business or another around Union Square. That’s a big change, a good change, from five years ago.”

The downtown occupancy rate, based on square footage, is currently close to 90 percent, said Connie Kincaid, executive director of the Hickory Downtown Development Association.

Kincaid said that’s an impressively high rate considering the lingering weakness in the economy, and that while the district has lost some popular businesses in the last year, it has gained others.

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