My Ideas For The Downtown Plaza & Surrounding Area.

I have reached out in the past and asked readers to share their opinion as to what they think might work for the Downtown Plaza. The response was minimal. However, let's try it again.

Here's what "I" would do and let's see how many Politicians follow my lead?

First of all, you need a MAGNET business to move in there. I'm talking something like, STARBUCKS. Then you need someplace like a Seacrets down there. You need a Barber Shop, old school. How about all of the Recruiting Offices for the Armed Forces. In other words, don't bank on groups of businesses like Antiques. When these businesses die off, they all fail and we've already experienced that. A complete mix of businesses that compliment one and other, not compete with one and other. You want agreements with contracts so they can't open another one within 10 miles from this location. If you want it to work, that's what you're going to have to do.

Now, there are things that must change down there right away. Take out ALL of the brick and flower beds, ponds that don't work anyway and create diagonal parking in front of every location on BOTH sides. NO METERS whatsoever! If you have to use the parking behind the Plaza, have each store validate your parking at no cost. I agree with something Anne Taylor said. We need to have retail on the bottom floors of these buildings, not lawyers, real estate agents and doctors. They should be on the second floor, should they choose to stay and residential on 2nd and 3rd floors.

Once things begin to start hopping down there, a bus service should be made available from the college to the plaza. This would be for several purposes. To supply transportation for employees, shopping in general and or night life. You don't have to have all alcohol establishments to survive. I had a business in Crofton called Happy Days Cafe. Black & white checkered floors, black and white striped awnings inside over the ice cream parlor area, a deli inside, 3, 7 ft pool tables and TV's everywhere. Very reasonable food prices and the place was always steady with business for lunch and dinner 7 days a week. The idea was to recreate the old Arnolds from the Show Happy Days. I had a 1950's style decor and it was very inexpensive to put together. I even had the 1950's style tables and seats, it was really cool. AAAAAAAAH! LOL

You just have to look at the market you have and then cater to it. The college should be a huge draw. You put an ice cream parlor down there where you have inside and outside seating, maybe even another Rita's and watch what happens. It's a home run, I'd even invest into one, seriously.

There's a daytime lunch crowd, big deal. The numbers you take in at lunch really account for next to nothing but maybe breaking even with your Staff, power and supplies, that's it. You MUST bring in an evening crowd to make it work. I know the business, I'm telling you, it's a must. You don't want to compete so much that you put the other Downtown businesses out of business. It would be better to make them a part of your group and support one and other like the old days when America was so great. You know, like when Macy's didn't have something so you sent them to Woolworths instead.

The other thing you need is support from the City. Long term support. Giving away free taxes is a bunch of crap. Only the property owners make out on that deal. Look how GREAT the Mayor's pie in the sky Art District worked. Lots of free press, not ONE person taking advantage of it. Why, because you'd have to BUY the property and own it. Then open your art store and make everything there in order to get a tax credit. Politicians are some pretty stupid people, believe me. They love patting themselves on the back with stupid ideas like this and then go off to another convention next year and come back with yet another stupid one.

The City needs to make a contract with WBOC & WMDT and run constant year round commercials that hit you in the face each and every day. Go Here, come to Riverfest, the Salisbury Zoo, the Ward Museum, the Downtown Plaza, you know the drill.

My earlier article about the Atlantic Hotel needs to take a page from this particular article as well as the Town of Berlin and Ocean City. Communities supporting their own.

Do YOU realize through the Cable Company if you run random ads on TV you should be able to purchase them for around $3.00 an ad! I know, many of you are going to say that's a bunch of crap but it's true. You sign a regular contract with these people and you can buy filler spaces day and night for about $3.00 per additional ad not on your regular schedule.

I used to buy an ESPN Package and run 30 second ads on Redskins Games for around $75.00 an ad. Now granted, that was a deal, should someone drop out of advertising for that particular game but I jumped on it every opportunity they allowed. Television commercials are NOT as bad as some would believe. If the City/County joined forces and bought scheduled ads to market the City & County, if you became a part of this group they could tack you onto their ads and reasonably market these areas and build instant business.

Now, there's other things you have to watch out for. When you get a group of businesses together like this you must have proper security. The SPD would have to police this area and let criminals know if they mess with anyone, they're going down. Any sign of hanging out and the wrong crowd selling drugs and so forth, everyone has to come together and get rid of them instantly. Believe it or not, that can destroy everyone very fast.

You don't want grocery store/pharmacy kind of businesses because let's face it, they won't be able to compete and they'll only have 5 to 9 pm kind of traffic. They'll also take up a ton of parking for short term and get frustrated when they can't find a spot.

Then think about what compliments the daytime businesses throughout the Downtown area. Perhaps a UPS or FedEx Kinko's store? There are thousands of people reading this Blog daily. I'm sure you can come up with many more ideas and make it work. IMHO, I don't believe the current administration ever thought of coming to YOU and asking what YOU want. They go to places like Rockville and come back saying, we want that kind of Library. However, it's not what the Downtown needs. Again, I'm back to the wants verses needs thing again. However, it works.

The Downtown Plaza can work. Pulling ALL of the property owners together would be a good start as well. They must be a part of the discussion because without them we can come up with all of the greatest ideas on earth but if they don't agree, it's useless. Forcing some of the property owners to do something and clearly show they want to sell or rent their space is another problem. Anyhow, good healthy discussion on this post can't hurt anyone. So let's see where this takes us and we'll see just how much the Downtown Plaza means to Salisbury Citizens.