alturas, office depot, downtown

["Lois Melina" <lmelina@moscow.com>]

Our recent discussions about the movement of business from downtown to the tech park and the competition from Office Depot and Hastings has me looking out my front window onto Main Street and thinking that the future of downtown can't be determined by badmouthing the alternatives, but by making the downtown a more attractive alternative.

 

Many of the buildings downtown are old. Some of the office spaces have very limited natural light, or no windows at all. My office has had serious flooding in the past due to a leaky roof. There are HUGE cracks in my ceilings and walls. If there were an explosion or an earthquake near downtown, I fear many of the buildings would crumble. When I've looked at other office space downtown, much of it would require a tremendous investment just for cosmetic improvements. If I were moving a lot of high tech equipment into an office, I would have some serious questions about the wiring in some of these buildings and whether the roof was going to fall in on my expensive equipment. I'm sure some landlords have made such improvements, but when I see lawyers who own their own downtown building moving to the 'burbs, I wonder if there isn't more reason they are moving out of downtown besides lack of parking. Perhaps the cost of maintaining a building downtown is just not cost effective. Yet at least at street level, the rent for these buildings can be quite high. And that reduces the extent to which a downtown merchant can compete with a chain. (I recently bought 5 zip disks at a downtown computer store for about $67. The same 5-pack at Office Depot was $45 (with rebate).)

 

Is there something we can do as a community, not just to encourage people to shop downtown, but to make sure that the infrastructure of the downtown area remains viable without increasing the cost of renting downtown so much that merchants are even less competitive?

 

Lois Melina