Panera on Main Street?

[fsu813]

you were going good until your second sentence.....

"because the only sycophants around here are the cadre of defenders who think SPAR can do no wrong"

......and then you had to go and massively exaggerate again.

anyone know anyone that has a "SPAR can do no wrong" opinion?

I don't.

[hanjin1]

I'm not a big fan of Panera (I don't hate it, I just don't care for their food much), but my wife loves it. But even though I don't care for Panera, it would be a great addition to Springfield. I think it wuold help out other business' immensely to have a popular upscale chain like Panera.

[thelakelander]

I guess the only thing that bothered me enough to speak up in this thread, is the clustering factor. Clustering is real. Thrift stores, restaurants, corporate chains, local businesses, etc., all work together naturally to bring customers to their neighbors. You'll have people who go to lunch and say "let's check out the thrift store", and people going to the thrift store and see the Panera and say "hmm, I'm hungry...", and still other people who will want coffee and decide to go into 3 layers. It's a natural synergy. The cluster itself becomes the draw, instead of any individual business, and they all win because of it. But for it to work, people can't be so insistent about what they"don't want" or "won't allow". For it to work, the mix needs to be as diverse as possible. You can't just have 10 storefronts that are all the same thing, that won't draw anybody.

Bingo.  Regardless of whether its a car wash, Panera, Uptown Market, Chan's or the thrift shop, for the commercial district to truly develop naturally, acceptance of a diverse mix of businesses is critical.  The last thing the corridor needs is to gain a reputation in the business world of being a tough place to get a business started, due to time consuming front end hassling.  Time equals money and the more difficult it becomes to spend your money on taking a risk on Main, the better chance most potential businesses go elsewhere to serve the urban core.

[Springfield Girl]

But as to your second point, yeah, I gotta admit there's no love lost there. I always found it weird that one or another of my properties would be fine for years, then all of a sudden COJ would show up saying they got 10 complaints in a month. Didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's up, especially when they were doing it to other landlords I talked to. It's pretty despicable.

I think this is where the problem started. Take any issue at face value and evaluate it from a common sense approach. Why would anyone report properties for no reason? The options seem to me to be 1) the property is not kept up nicely 2) the tenents are a nuisance 3) you've made an enemy for some reason who wants you gone 4) you have a crazy neighbor 5) you have a criminal neighbor who thinks you are disrupting his business.
I'm sure there might be some more but these came to mind.
My house is the 3rd from a corner. My neighbor on the corner used to own the property between us and rent it out. He did regular maintainence, had great tenents and there was never a problem. He eventually sold the property to an out of town investor. Six 20 somethings moved in, again no problem for a while. The kids started complaining that the landlord would do no maintainence and the place was starting to fall apart. We helped them with the yard and minor repairs (like installing a working front porch light) The property "manager" would never show up, many times not even to pick up the rent. One by one they started moving out. When the bathroom ceiling caved in they threw in the towel and gave up. This happend over a five year period and no one on the block had complaints. Then the new tenents moved in. Pit bulls in cages on the front balcony that never stopped barking, unruly children running through the street, our yards and porches (It was a his, mine and ours thing and before they left I knew the names of 15 kids) constant partying, drinking, cussing and drug using on the front stoop every night. We kindly asked the tenents to control the dogs, noise and kids and were met with threats and worse behavior. We called the landlord for relief but none came. We called code enforcement, animal control and the cops. Finally the only thing that worked was threatening the owner with legal action and the people were finally evicted. My point is, we coexisted for years with no problems or complaints but once faced with the nightmare of the new tenents the calls and complaints from neighbors became regular. It's hard enough to get anyone to do something about a legitimate complaint so I have a hard time believing that anyone would be given credence for false complaints. I think SPAR probably gets the blame for a lot of this when it is really the neighbors of the properties in question.

[Springfield Girl]

Sorry, I'm off subject again. Panera-good, ill behaved landlords and tenents-bad.

[ChriswUfGator]

I think some of it did originally get going with the tenants. Actually all of it probably did. I did have some problems, and a JSO/SWAT drug raid that didn't help much. But that tenant (anthony watkins, I'll never forget that bane of my existence) was already in there and under a lease when I bought that building, and I already was going to get rid of him as soon as I could. But the real problem, from my viewpoint, was that it's pretty difficult to find tenants that you're happy with in that area, it's not like it's a high-rise on the beach or something.

There just aren't hordes of married couples with the statistical 2.3 kids, the tahoe, and the family dog, beating down your door to rent in S'field. Actually there's pretty much none of that. I felt (and still feel) it is unfair to blame landlords for having a certain class of tenants, when that's all that's really available over there. SPAR and its associated LOLA's disagree, and felt the solution was calling in complaints on property owners in an effort to trigger condemnation. They literally prefer an empty building or a vacant lot to having "those kind of people" in the neigborhood (that is comprised of 90% of "those kind of people" to begin with, long before they even got there). I was really taken aback at some of these people with that attitude of "I'm going to move in here, and now everybody I don't like has to move out." The vast majority of tenants were good (but poor) people.

And FWIW, I never got a single call before one of those orchestrated campaigns to call in 100 complaints on the same place, they just did it without telling me. By the time I was ever notified about anything, it had usually already become a disaster. And not just for me, for COJ too, since I'm not the personality type to let things go unchallenged. But if someone ever picked up the phone and said "here's what's up, can we work on this?" I would've been more than happy to. But it never happened. Shoot first, ask questions later.

And most of those complaints were utter B.S., that's the funny thing, code enforcement was getting as sick of dealing with it as I was. But once they get a complaint, each one has to be investigated. So I get upset when I see the same thing happening to someone else. Until just today, nobody ever contacted Strider and Sheclown and said "let's take a look at this and see whether it's really a problem or not", they just went ahead declared a behind-the-scenes war on them based on nothing more than preconceived notions and their own prejudices.

[fsu813]

"Until just today, nobody ever contacted Strider and Sheclown and said "let's take a look at this and see whether it's really a problem or not", they just went ahead declared a behind-the-scenes war on them based on nothing more than preconceived notions and their own prejudices."

- this already happened. an agreement was reached. Strider's properties were grandfathered in and all was well, then he found a way to open more without "techincally" opening more....going against the agreement's sentiment. thus all this mess.

[nvrenuf]

Panera opening in Springfield = good

That is my surely futile attempt to get this thread back on topic.

[fsu813]

well, i don't think anyone would disagree with that in the end.

[cindi]

It would speak volumes if main street could land something even similar to panera.

[hooplady]

As chains go, Panera isn't so bad.  Some of their locations are set back, but some engage and enliven the street - at least this would not be a foreign concept to them.

[Karl_Pilkington]

It would speak volumes if main street could land something even similar to panera.

cindy have you been to Jerome Browns?  kicks panera ass!

[cindi]

love jerome's but they don't have scones.

[Dan B]

Mmmmm, bbq scones 

[Springfielder]

oh yeah, scones!!!