The folks who run the Gloucester Main Street Association and the Gloucester Main Street Preservation Trust have developed a new way to get at potential business investors money. It's called the GLFR, or Gloucester Revolving Loan Fund. All hail BAAL for that. These folks want you to invest in the dead area of Gloucester Main street. A place with minimal parking at best, where the sidewalks barely meet residential standards, never mind commercial standards and there are areas considered potentially dangerous to pedestrians as the slopes on the sidewalks do not meet specs based on our research.
This is an area that has a lot of new business turnover as most people can not make a go of it here. One must ask why. Simple, no parking and no chance of ever attracting an anchor business. An anchor business is pretty much a large retailer that has the capability of attracting large amounts of traffic into it's store and all the other stores in the area will hopefully benefit from the extra traffic in the area by offering complimentary goods and or services not carried by the anchor store.
Not to take anything away from the well established businesses on Main Street, there are some wonderful shops there if you do not mind the lack of parking and poor pedestrian walkways throughout the area. But look at what has been built in the area over the past decade and you will see that the only thing that might prove viable is senior service providers and if the population does go up with seniors, then maybe one candy store can make it in this environment. I would not bank on anything else.
What also tickles our funny bone about the statements coming out of the Main Street Preservation Trust is their commitment to preserving main street. Take a look at the present structures around the area and explain to us where preservation exists. Look at the rents for the area and they are way to high for such poor traffic. Most of the businesses that went out of business all complained of no customers or not enough customers to support the business.
So you want to go broke trying to make money on Main Street? There are much better options and at better prices in other areas of the county where you are more likely to get traffic into your business. If you listen to the hype these folks want to sell you, it all sounds rosy. Your best bet is to walk the entire Main street area for one day and talk to present business owners and actually pay attention to everything you see. You may save yourself a fortune and much heart ache. Just be careful around these folks who want to give you such nice loans, they can sell ice to an Eskimo and water to fish. And they can make everything very easy and handle all the paper work for you. Just don't miss any payments even after you have gone belly up and have nothing left. Isn't that just great news?
Link to all the wonderful news. All hail BAAL! And you even get to bow before the great BAAL when entering their office at their wonderful BAAL shopping center on Main Street. Where our public library is as well. That's just so special how they thought of all these wonderful ideas ahead of time. Just remember, anyone after your money is going to be very helpful and offer more than you ever expected, that is until all your money is gone. Then you get to see they are not sheep. And you thought they were as gentle as lambs?
