your family pharmacy
Speaking of Belleville, there is a story in the Intelligencer (the local paper) about the closure of the the store my dad worked at before I was born, and my mom works at now. I worked there for two or three years myself, in high school.
It's kind of sad. I shouldn't say much, since I'm privy to information (and speculation) David Geen evidentally doesn't want to be made public. I can say that the people quoted in the article are just making stuff up, however sensible it might sound. The article fails to mention that Mr Geen (David's father and the store's previous owner), died about a year ago.
This is newsworthy because, like a lot of downtowns in small cities, Belleville's downtown ain't what it used to be. People are proposing lots of crazy schemes to make it work again, and this sort of thing is hardly encouraging.
My dad worked at that store up until they openned the Loyalist market store in the late 80s. He left Geen's a couple years ago to seek a better opportunity elsewhere in the city. My mom started working part-time after I started school, and full-time after my little sister started. My tour of duty as stock person isn't something I like to think about a lot, but I'm still a bit sentimental about the old place.
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tinkerer
writes:
Ah, yes--DownTown. Our own city council has been tied up in mediation/litigation over a downtown revitalization project for the past three years. I think they may *never* settle it! (yes, it is already built, of course) And, ironically, the council agreed to the stupid project without a public vote (probably illegal, hey?), and so now we have a new council who got elected mainly because they promised to "fix" the issue. Ha. Meanwhile, I have worked in the heart of our downtown for 13 years...there is always some kind of construction going on (they sure do spend a lot of $$$ on an area that has lousy shopping revenue!) so you gotta wonder why anyone would want to go there anyway what with the noise and mess and traffic problems, all for some shops that charge more per item than most people earn in a week. But, blame the suburbs and strip malls with their nifty free parking garages and one-stop shopping, and the Gatesesque corporate franchises with their monopolies on consumer goods. I went to a local northside mall last night looking for something, and after a few hours felt like a total Stepford Wife clone in a vicious loop of samity. Time to add Diversity to the extinct species list...
Submitted 2002-08-28 22:44:53
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flying squirrel
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That sounds more like Kitchener-Waterloo than Belleville. Belleville's downtown could never be accused of being too up-market. There are a couple nice shops, but mostly they're more expensive only because they can't compete for the volume discounts and consolidated shipping the chain stores get. The big brainstorm from a year or so ago was to change the narrow two-lane one-way street back to two-way traffic. This did certainly increase the vehicular traffic, but I'm pretty sure the pedestrian traffic (you know, the people out there buying stuff) was helped any. Crossing the street just got a lot trickier. Mostly it's a lot of empty buildings and vacant lots. The used bookstore closed earlier this year, which made me particularly sad. Those things are nearly impossible to kill. I liked that place.
Waterloo's downtown is kind of nice. Not really thriving, but I like it. The one big drawback, though, is this terrible monstrosity:
http://www.garywill.com/waterloo/wts.htm
They're apparently going to start tearing that down in a couple months to make way for a more upscale supermarket and whatever else comes later.
http://www.therecord.com/news/news_02082885159.html
Submitted 2002-08-29 12:50:46
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tinkerer
writes:
A grocery store downtown? What an odd concept. Actually, having people living in a downtown core seems odd--in terms of residents, all we've got are a few very old, extremely nasty decaying tenements that ought to have been torn down years ago. No joke, the average income for the residents in that zip code is barely half of that of the other zip codes in our city (which ought to say a lot about the unfortunates who live there...and we won't mention the criminal conviction history of the average downtown resident. Ahem.). And they can be a bit of a menace on the streets, as they persist in panhandling or getting publically drunk and rowdy or otherwise obnoxious toward those of us who work in the core. As for the rest, I readily admit the buildings are much improved for all that construction.. but now the rents are too high for all but really upscale businesses (not so bad for the highly paid professionals working downtown, lousy for us lowly (clerk) peons--unless you like to window shop these places whose goods are far removed from your needs, lifestyle and budget) and so the number of actual shops has dwindled considerably. Half of our downtown is actually inside (indoor mall style), plus there are skywalks connecting many of the buildings, so once you find parking (never free, and often a nightmare) getting around is not a problem if you like to walk. And since much is new, it is remarkably clean. But I really miss the incredible diversity of small and unique shops that used to inhabit the old buildings that couldn't afford to stay. *sigh*
Submitted 2002-08-30 00:04:23
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flying squirrel
writes:
Well, Waterloo's "downtown" (which is really called "UpTown", since we leave the "downtown" stuff to Kitchener), isn't really a central urban hub or anything. There's one office tower (two if you count the 6 storey blob stuck on the crappy mall thing), and a bunch of little shops and things. There were a lot of old, derelect factories lying around when I first moved here, but those have all now been torn down, and expensive condos are springing up in their place.
The old grocery store predates the condos, though. That's good, because I would have had to walk a whole lot further to get groceries when I was in school.
Downtown Kitchener is probably more comparable. I wouldn't want to live down there, even though they're building new highrise apartment condos and stuff (I wouldn't want to live in one of those, either). Kitchener has taken on the task of buying up all the seedy bars and strip joints downtown and... I don't know what they're doing with them exactly. They've torn down one whole block and putting in a Farmer's Market complex (to replace the Farmer's Market that was buried in a crappy mall, which replaced the beautiful old City Hall and old-fashioned outdoor market). (Tourists come to the area to gawk at the Mennonites in their horse-and-buggies, so going crazy with Farmer's Markets isn't entirely unreasonable). They're going to tear down one of my favourite Vietnamese restaurants in the process.
Submitted 2002-08-30 10:33:47
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