How many of you reading this column get regular deliveries of basic consumer goods from Amazon or FedEx, or meals from Uber Eats or DoorDash? Raise your hands.
Okay. How many of you live in – or want or live in – a walkable neighborhood with a mix of housing types and diverse people amid local restaurants, bars and stores that are conveniently located? Raise your hands.
How many of you raised your hands both times?
Now, how many of you see the dissonance?
Amazon saw huge gains early in the coronavirus pandemic, and then fell back to normal business in 2021. It still accounts for 40 percent of all online sales in the country and remains the biggest single e-tailer, even as Target and Walmart have added online marketing along with their huge stores. Though online shopping remains only about 15 percent of all U.S. retailing, it nonetheless has changed a lot of peoples’ habits.
Amazon, Grubhub and COVID are not the only things that threaten neighborhood shopping and walkability, but they show that our habits, preferences and demands can shape our communities – and that we may have to be proactive to ensure we have places worth walking to.
New York City has lost nearly 40,000 retail jobs over the past three years, a decline of about 11 percent – in a place that has greater density, walkability and diverse local retail than any place in the country.
In Columbus, developers have trouble filling retail space that is required on the ground floors of many apartment buildings, and the city is considering a relaxation of those zoning requirements.
For decades, in Columbus and across the country, housing developers focused on sprawling subdivisions, and commercial developers focused on shopping centers, malls and big-box stores – separated from neighborhoods and accessible only by car. They said that was what the market demanded. But they confused willingness to buy with demand. Over time, it became clear that more and more people wanted old-fashioned, urban-type neighborhoods with nearby shopping and dining options.
Housing trends have shifted, but retail has not. Malls are falling out of favor, only to be replaced by clusters of big-box stores or Easton-style “lifestyle centers” that try to imitate the downtowns of yore. Most retailing is in huge stores that don’t fit the neighborhoods where we want to live.
And so, the Short North has a panoply of restaurants and bars, gift shops, specialty stores and a few remaining galleries, but no hardware store or grocery. We can get a latte on a short walk, but we still need to fight traffic to buy a screwdriver or pick up a carton of eggs.
Curiously, the best mix of neighborhood retail in Central Ohio is in a suburb. Tremont Center in Upper Arlington is, in some ways, still in the 1950s. Tremont Pharmacy, an independent drug store, has been in the center since it opened in 1951. The Chef-o-Nette diner has been there since 1955. Tom Tarpy’s, a local grocery chain, opened in 1952 and became Huffman’s Market in 1987, and then UA Market in 2017. The site will become Littleton’s Market this summer. A bakery called Tremont Goodie Shop opened in 1955 and, despite changing hands a few times, has remained in business aside from a short period in 2009. Brown Shoes, opened in 1964, shut down earlier this year.
Alas, it lacks a hardware store – but Tremont Hardware was there at the beginning and for a few decades after.
Another thing Tremont Center lacks is chain stores.
Is there a lesson here? Nothing definitive. But perhaps a collection of smaller, locally owned, neighborhood-oriented businesses is part of the recipe for retail longevity and stability.
Research suggests another lesson might be that non-local commercial landlords are willing to absorb the cost of leaving storefronts vacant while betting on a long lease with higher rents down the road. The development and real-estate industries have changed.
In fact, what’s now an industry with large national companies, used to be just a bunch of small-scale businesses that built storefronts and added a few stories of offices or apartments for additional revenue. They lived in the neighborhood, and it was in their interest to keep the space filled for their customers and neighbors. Tremont Center was developed by King Thompson, who was co-founder of Upper Arlington, and whose offices were in the center.
The big property manager looks at the bottom line, not the community; and considers storefronts as “units,” not places where neighbors work and shop.
Walk to the independent bookstore down the street instead of ordering on Amazon. Keep your dollars in your neighborhood instead of the chain-store CEO’s hometown. If you want a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood, be prepared to walk the walk.
