Out with the Old and in with the New
By CJ Walker “How are you? How is your family doing?” These are typical things said by Michael Bradshaw, owner of the Grill, to his customers on a daily basis. Downtown Athens, Georgia is known for giving you a place that is unique in a way that it feels like home. When walking into a local business in this area, you are treated like a long time friend. The associates working give you one-on-one assistance and take the time to fill your needs. This however may not always be the case when it comes to commercial properties. Over the years, downtown Athens has been a place for native Athenians to start local businesses, but lately that has been changing. Recently, many of the local businesses have been pushed out of the downtown area to make room for commercial companies. “Downtown changes so much here especially the past five years, but in the past ten it has changed a lot,” said David Walker, machine shop owner and resident of Athens. “There didn’t used to be things like Five Guys or Zaxby’s and Subway. The restaurants that were downtown were locally owned and operated, not franchised restaurants, and had kind of a different feel to it. The boutiques and shops and stuff were that way as well.” Downtown Athens is known to be a unique place that maintains a lot of the city’s culture however with franchises taking over the city, this fact is becoming a fallacy. A lot of uproar has come about regarding this issue in recent news. When Urban Outfitters moved into town, along with J. Crew, many of the residents felt as if the line has been crossed. Some have even begun to boycott going to the franchised companies and only support the local businesses they know and love. “If we’re going to have a social event or a volunteer day, we usually try to get pizzas from a local pizzeria as apposed to a place like Papa Johns,” said Michael Day, vice president of SORBA. If you ask any of the local business owners if they support the idea of these companies arising in the downtown area, you will get a hard no. They are completely against it, but can’t really do much to change what is happening. What they can do and what they are doing is staying true to what native Athenians know and love. “Part of our draw [at the Grill] is that we’ve been open for a long time and a lot of people who remember the Grill back in the day, come back into town and look around and don’t recognize anything except for us and maybe two or three other places,” Bradshaw said. “Downtown kind of turns over every five years. Every five years you can rewrite all of downtown. We are one of the exceptions to that rule.” Though many believe as if these commercial companies will take away businesses from the local stores and change the vibe of Athens completely, there are those that feel like these stores have nothing to worry about. They think regardless if these franchises come into town or not, the local businesses have loyal customers and nothing will change. These people are also supporting the idea of bigger companies coming into town. They say it will draw revenue to Athens and bring in more business, in turn giving more exposure to these local companies. “Athens needs companies like Urban Outfitters or even Subway,” Pamela Thompson, executive director of the ADDA, said. “These companies bring more revenue to the city which, in the end, helps out the smaller companies. When American Threads first opened its doors in Athens, people were extremely skeptical. They thought this store would ruin all other competing clothing stores in the vicinity. However, this commercial property ended up being a good thing for the local clothing store, Cheeky Peach. American Threads gave them much more business than they previously had causing Cheeky Peach to expand to a larger location. “Having some chains downtown that have names that are recognizable to newcomers can be a good thing,” said Thompson. “It can introduce people to downtown who go for the business name they recognize, and then they stay to visit and learn about the local businesses. ” Many people believe that this is only happening in the Athens area, but that is not the case. It is beginning to be a pattern where, in college towns, a lot of the local businesses are closing and even more chains and franchises are taking their spots. College students are coming from various places across the nation and typically know nothing about the city they are about to call home for the next four years. With this being the case, they generally migrate toward familiar names and brands. “Downtown has had ~2,000 students move into apartments and live downtown 24 hours a day. This creates a new market for certain businesses,” Thompson said. “Students are attracted to the names they know, so we try to give them what they want.” Though this is a relatively new trend, it seems to be one that will be around for a while. With more students moving into the downtown area, there will be a higher demand for commercial properties that are well known. This fact forces the developers of downtown Athens to live by the expression, “give the people what they want.”
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School Stories:You will find a few of the articles that I have written here. Archives
December 2016
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