February 1996 Table Of Contents
Who is left to defend us?
Courthouse fight reveals extinction of merchant class
By Tim Tielman
The social costs of not preserving traditional retail space in downtown Buffalo
was brought into sharp focus in the recent decision by the County Legislature to
locate a new courthouse far from where it might have done some good. Sadly, most
owner-occupied small businesses vanished when their buildings were demolished in
urban renewal schemes 30 years ago.
The debate over the location quickly acquired ritualistic overtones, with one group
of suits opposing another group. Missing were the ‘human faces’ of a community’s
small business people.
That the Administration was able to essentially hide the largest public works project
in 20 years and get it passed in a midnight debate near Christmas was due not only
to some amazing powers of prevarication, but the total absence of someone injecting
themselves into the debate whose livelihood hung in the balance.
Many good people cared deeply that the courthouse go where the public benefit would
be greatest, but the issue never became a broad public one until an unwilling property
owner – embodied in Bishop Mansell – came forward and said “we like our property
just the way it is, thank you very much.”
The just-folks small business owner with a mortgage to pay, mouths to feed, and kids
to send to college was long gone. The absence of this downtown merchant class is
a huge, gaping weakness that will continue to do unmeasured harm to the city.
According to recent Bureau of Census figures, almost 75% of U.S. retailers have nine
or fewer employees, and fully 49% have four or fewer. Those are family-owned businesses.
They are hypersensitive to anything which effects the flow of customers on the sidewalk,
an early-warning system in time of trouble or a bellwether of changing fashion.
One need only point to East Aurora, where the small town merchant was a potent enough
symbol to stop a Wal-Mart in its tracks, or Elmwood and Hertel Avenues in the city,
which continue to be fertile breeding grounds of entrepeneurship and community leadership,
to grasp what downtown is missing.
And while they may be under siege in the suburbs by big box retailers, circumstances
in a downtown area may actually help family-owned businesses, provided they have
the small spaces they need.
Lots of abandoned retail space exists, but it is in pieces too big for a startup
to swallow, as are the cleared parcels of urban renewal projects past. The threshold
of economic participation for small business is unbearably high
There are emotional attractions to traditional cities which people find a welcome
alternative – either as a lifestyle or an occasional change of pace – to auto-based
retail. But there is growing evidence of economic and social necessity as well. G.J.
Ashworth, in the last Preservation Report [Making Buffalo’s Historic City], made
the point that the very physical dimensions of traditional shops promote small neighborhood
businesses dependent on – and contributing to – pedestrian traffic.
A program to provide these spaces, even in temporary infill structures on public
land or parking lots, is sorely needed– much more so than sales tax gimmicks.
Many historic buildings, good, solid architectural citizens, would profit as they
become attached to activity again, and a merchant class might reappear, involved
in civic life like their lives depended on it.