A Letter To The Editor 4-20-15

I went to 3rd Friday this last, meeting and greeting with Gov. Hogan and Mr. Culver and delegates Adams and Anderton, among others, and observed the following.

“Echelon” is gone, and a new restaurant is there “Under new management”. Starts with an “S”, I think… nobody but bartenders in there, even with a Plaza packed with people right outside. I expressed my note of this to my 25+ Y.O. daughter, and she followed up with a response that took me incompletely by non-surprise! She said, “Unless you’re one of the “Downtown In- Crowd”, you can’t do crap in the downtown area”.

I want everyone reading this to think about that for more than a moment.

In order to get a new business in this downtown, one must not have any business sense, experience in the bar or entertainment business, or, for that matter, any business at all! All you need is to be an “In” crowd member! Well, isn’t that special!

What downtowns in America are oriented around the Bar scene? Can anyone think of one? I can’t. Restaurants and bars where I come from feed off existing crowds who come to a place for a reason. After all, everybody gets hungry and thirsty wherever they are, but that is the point I’m making. When people get hungry and thirsty, and they’re home, they will most probably make a ham sandwich and grab a beer from the fridge, not run to a downtown area! If they are at work, they will grab a half hour lunch , but not have a beer. People go to downtown areas to shop for things for their households; clothing, furnishings, antiques, unique foods, oddities and such. Nobody “goes out drinking” anymore with all the concentration LEO’s have on DUI’s. To have a successful lot of high end bars and restaurants, you need a large customer base. Everybody will have a meal and two beers, but no one will drink three! Downtown shoppers have the day off and disposable income in their pockets because their spouses or themselves have good, steady jobs or a well -earned retirement package. Not a whole lot of college students.

So, now we have many high end restaurants opened up on the plaza, and 2 or 3 Bridal shops. Let’s see, The original and best loves are Market Street Inn, (Go, Brooke!) Add the Cellar Door and Roadie Joes,, but all of a sudden in 8 months or so, there’s the Brick Room, Echelon, Whatever they named the old fire station band place, and whatever high end restaurants across town that are already established. What else is there? A pizza shop, some art storefronts that only open for a few hours a day or two every other month, if at all, the Health Department, the GOB, some lawyer offices and the court houses, (real crowd pleasers, there), the Chamber of Commerce, Whiting Turner Construction, Gillis’ office, and Barbara Mikulski’s office.

Wait right here ‘til I get back! Does that sound like fun or what? Oh, and we get to pay to be there or get fined if our appointment goes overtime. Bonus!

I have never been so glad in my life that I’m not a Democrat Piece of “In Crowd”.

There is only this much room in this town for high end restaurants, and then, there ain’t no more.

When Wicomico County has no jobs, and the unemployment rate is highest in the state, and the County, I really don’t see where the sustainable income for all these bars is coming from. Bottom line, there are no high end, disposable income jobs coming to Salisbury, and most of what was here has gone. Liarton surely isn’t working towards getting any manufacturing, shipping, or warehousing jobs here. Nobody is going anywhere to shop without disposable income.

Wicomico (and the State) needs to attract lots of good paying companies to get our unemployed back in the work force manufacturing quality products. That is how to “Revitalize” a downtown and shrink ghettos. Opening up countless high end restaurants just won’t do it.