Letter to the Editor: Main Street from a Shop Owner's POV

To the Editor: 

Everyone has a biased point of view on the topic of Main Street development.

As an example, Joe Ventresca wants to be able to fill his properties with high-paying tenants on a consistent basis, and of course it would be nice to have township money pay to recruit new shop owners and keep occupancy rates up. People in town want to have cute shops to look at, but not have it impact their taxes (and many prefer the lower costs of big-box stores). Shop owners (like myself—the ) get frustrated when we have to pay $150,000 of improvements in our stores and not own any of those improvements (they are owned by the property owners like Joe).

It would be interesting to look at what other townships do. For example, in Haddonfield, the township will pay for the first couple of months rent and offset a percentage of the improvements. Collingswood has a very aggressive program to bring in new businesses. On the other hand, taxpayers do not want to fund the dreams of some business person to sell shoes or hamburgers on Main Street. And the reality is that there are enough people who come along (like the four businesses in the Maxx's space) to keep Main Street fairly populated.

Another reality is also that not many of those businesses make much money. It took the Moorestown Running Company four years to become profitable, and the loan I made to fund the improvements, inventory and losses of the first 3.5 years will take about eight to 10 years to repay. And we are probably one of the better businesses on Main Street.

I will say on a personal basis, the only person in town that actually really helped when I wanted to open up a shop was Jake DerHagopian. A volunteer. He is the type of guy that really helps this town and does not get the credit he deserves. The township itself was not helpful. For example, after we started making the improvements to open our shop, we were stalled for six weeks waiting for permits to do the construction work needed. That was six weeks of lost sales that to a normal business would have been a real problem.

On the positive side, many of the businesses in town are like myself. We want to help make Moorestown a better place. And certainly in my case, that is the major motivation for having a Main Street business. We have had great satisfaction in building an expanded running community in town.

Bob Bickel
Owner, Moorestown Running Company

Letters to the editor can be submitted to rob.scott@patch.com. Letters may be edited for length or clarity.