Posts tagged as "main_street" - Chris Hardie

(Sometimes I wake with a start in the night and think I can hear Palladium-Item Viewpoints Editor Dale McConnaughay's voice chanting in the distance, "you must take a stand, you must enter the fray!"   It's probably because almost every editorial the newspaper has published in the last two months about the income or expenses of City government have included a not-so-subtle encouragement for current candidates for office to make that particular issue a part of our political campaigns.  Today, I'll...

There's an interesting and sad article in today's Palladium-Item, Main Street struggles for survival.  Articles like it are being written about struggling downtown areas across the country, so of course it's nothing new in "this economy," but because it's about the downtown in my community, I take special notice. The article contains some interviews with downtown business owners, some perspective on the history of the Main Street organization there, and some talk of renewed activity from merchants...

For over a year now, I've lived less than a mile away from my company's office in downtown Richmond, Indiana.  And for the first time in my life, on most days I get to and from the office by walking instead of driving.  It's been a really enjoyable shift, and one that I hope I never take for granted, given how much of the rest of the country commutes to work every day. Some observations on walking to work: Since walking has become my usual mode of commuting, I've found myself noticing even...

I've been walking to and from work via the Main Street business district here in Richmond, Indiana, and as I take in with fresh eyes the businesses and product/service offerings located there, I can't help but argue a bit with the folks who would say it's a struggling area.  We have several great local restaurants, a wide variety of local banks, a place devoted entirely to the art of knitting and crocheting, a cloud computing specialist, a local sporting goods store, massage therapists and acupuncturists,...

One of the recurring themes in my writing in speaking about how to make our communities more self-reliant is that we can't necessarily depend on entities and organizations that aren't locally rooted to address the issues that are of local concern. The natural corollary to this is that, in addition to individual citizens taking action, we should be able to look to locally rooted organizations to be moving the community forward, helping us make it the place we want it to be. But one only has to look...

You may know about the ongoing conversation about safe bike riding in Uptown Richmond (the business district). At the end of last year, there was a nice improvement when signs that appeared to prohibit biking on that stretch of Main Street came down. I had an interesting related exchange today while walking on the sidewalk. A young man on a bike was riding on the sidewalk, headphones on, coming toward me quickly, and I saw him at the last minute with barely enough time to jump out of the way: Him:...

The forthcoming closing of Richmond's Target store, reported in the Palladium-Item on November 6th, is certainly a troubling development for the local economy. Jobs will be lost, the convenient shopping will need to be found elsewhere, and yet another "big box" piece of real estate will need to be filled. But perhaps more troubling than these obvious effects are the more subtle implications of how we as a community think about and support local businesses. Our downtown, and our local small business...

This piece was written for submission to the Palladium-Item during my time on the board of Main Street Richmond-Wayne County. It never made its way to the paper, but I thought I'd post it here since it's still relevant. It still strikes me how little we knew about everything that goes into running a business when we founded the technology company I work for, Summersault, in 1997. We were very confident about the services we wanted to provide and very focused on the clients with whom we wanted...