It Takes Money To Make Money!
Downtown Edgebrook business operators, listen up. This post is addressed to you. I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, because by now, you are aware of the situation with the parking lot on the northeast corner of Devon and Central Ave. The Edgebrook Chamber of Commerce funds the operation of this lot, so your customers can park there, for free. They lease this piece of property, and that lease expires in June of this year. Unless the Chamber receives financial assistance from more Edgebrook business owners, they won’t be able to continue leasing this parking lot.
Let’s face it: Unless that parking lot is available for your patrons, your retail businesses will suffer, because there isn’t enough street parking available in proximity of your stores, to entice shoppers to do business with you. Why park 4 blocks away, when I could park for free at Village Crossing or Pointe Plaza and have (almost) all of my retail store needs right in front of me? Look at it this way: It’s just part of the cost of doing business in downtown Edgebrook. And by now, you ought to know: You have some pretty loyal customers who frequent your stores and make you money. These folks are well worth this ongoing investment on your part. To those of you who contribute to the Chamber regularly and generously (and you know who you are), a big fat THANK YOU. And to all others, please consider or reconsider contributing to the parking lot fund. It will only benefit your own businesses.
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4) a] My estimate comes from the following: I frequently go for walks/bicycle rides down Hiawatha - judging from the ...
It figures. 
The Chamber should issue a press release thanking by name each of the merchants that contributes to the fund, and it could be distributed to the Nadig News, Times-Review (soon to be shut down according to the Tribune), the ECA newsletter, Sounds of Sauganash and websites like this. Then the readers can sort out who’s getting a free ride (or a free parking lot) and patronize accordingly if they value the lot.
That makes sense, JB. Although this parking lot reminds me somewhat of a condo homeowners association: Every unit owner is supposed to pitch into the assessment pool, for the good of the whole community, even if some unit owners may derive less of a benefit than others. But when an improvement project doesn’t get completed, because some unit owners didn’t contribute, the entire community suffers.
My hunch tells me that when it comes down to it, shoppers who use this parking lot frequently, probably won’t care whether it was Starbucks, Ace Hardware, Happy Foods or anyone else that paid up regularly. They will only care that the lot is available to them for free. Therefore, in fairness to the regular contributors, there probably should be some incentive (other than the fact that people would patronize downtown Edgebrook stores) for store owners to participate in the funding of this lot. Any type of “taxation” probably wouldn’t work. Carrot-on-a-stick maybe?
A few days back I mentioned the demise of the Pioneer Press’ Edgebrook-Sauganash newspaper. For any lurkers out there, I was mistaken in quoting the Tribune. It was Crain’s Chicago Business:
http://chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=27671
I suspect that it’s not going to get any better for the print media, any time in the foreseeable future. Which is why I think that neighborhood blogs are becoming so important. Thanks for that link to Crain’s, JB.