No Fellini market for Oak Ridge.
When asked if Aldi had given a reason for withdrawing its proposal, O’Connor said, “No, although there was some discussion about a site-preparation issue.
“They just wanted to be community friendly.”
I can’t rent grocery carts and buy weird off brand stuff on my side of town now? Poo.
Theres all this big mighty talk about getting big mighty businesses into Oak Ridge, like Target, and Aldi (for what its worth).
They throw incentives at these big businesses, like tax abatements or funky financing, they use city resources to get these things off the ground, and they bend over backwards. None of that is necessarilly a bad thing, because big businesses are, well, big, and tend to make money and taxes and good stuff like that.
However, this town apparently doesn’t do anything in the way of fostering small businesses. I’m thinking of some of my favorite places in town, like the Time-Out in Grove Center, or J & M’s butcher shop, or Jefferson Drug Store, or Razzleberry’s Ice Cream Lab. These places lend flavor in town, as well as providing a bit of retail tax and bringing shoppers into locales like that.
In talking with some of the folks who run these joints, I hear the city is at best indifferent, and at worse downright belligerent towards the needs of small businesses. Insanely high deposits for utilities, poorly slow response times for the same utilities, including the police dept (the fire dept in town I’ve never heard anything bad about, to the credit of fire chief Mack Bailey, despite his, uh, dropping the ball with the fireworks everywhere but Scarboro).
The town does have a chamber of commerce, but for small retail that really doesn’t do anything but suck up a $200 fee and provide a plaque (or a sticker on the window). Its for networking, but networking with other business owners isn’t what these people need. It might work well for doctors and lawyers, but for a dude running a deli, or a butcher shop, it ain’t much.
And doctors and lawyers can take care of themselves, thanks. Its the people working 12 hour days to keep their business open and in their name that I respect, and these are the people that Oak Ridge needs to take to heart, because people with that kind of dedication and drive are valuable.
So, what to do?
I’d love to see Oak Ridge really get serious about small business. It’d be bitchin to maybe have a group of officials tasked with fostering and assisting small businesses. It’d be even super bitchin’r to see the city set aside some of that mighty IDB money to trickle down on places opening up in Jackson Square, or Grove Center, or anywhere in town to help set up, and get a business through that first year.
We can get a Target anywhere. Where else can we get a Tank burger, or eat ice cream next to a life sized anatomically correct (trust me, Pigpen’s checked) pig next to the Playhouse?
Oak Ridge is a great town. Its a hell of a town.
Even if it can’t get its firecrackers shot off, or get its act together for a retail development, its an awesome town. One thing I like in particular about it is the burgeoning online community we have. Off the top of my head, I can come up with a half dozen blogs, easy, of folks who live in the ridge. They don’t always talk about the ridge, but the fact that their opinions are being broadcast from this weird little town is enough.
One thing this place lacks, tho, is a decent forum. Knoxville has KnoxBlab, and probably several more that I don’t know about, chock full of different people popping through. Some funny, some intelligent, some serious, some trolling, some all types at once, but its a dynamic community, a loud one, and one that Knoxville should be proud of.
We have, well, the Oak Ridger forums, run by one of the local newspapers, and for the past several years falling to disuse and disrepair because theres one or two people intent on making no sense at all and shouting down (sometimes even insulting or damn near threatening) people who have tried to steer the thing back into the good. I cut my teeth on the internet, as Shamusthedog, on those forums, and loved em until they went south. We had maybe 70 people popping up, so you’d know when you brought something up, it’d get bounced around quite a bit, and that was awesome.
Blogs are great, but blogs, well, they’re one person. You can comment, but a blog is a dictatorship (except the tumor, where Bos and Eaves have a little bit of say, but they’re afraid of me, so it doesn’t count). A blog is a soapbox, while a forum is a roundtable.
Well, after the last few weeks, seeing the kinda stuff going on in the Oak Ridger forums, a few people and I put our heads together, found some moderators, and started an independent forum page, Atomic City Talk!
I’m kinda psyched about it. It might take some time to take off, but I think, in this intelligent town, an online round table will be a huge asset. The fact that this thing is non-profit, independent, and community moderated is even better.
Come on by, locals and non-locals alike, and see what you think. It may take a little bit of time to get off the ground, but it’ll kick an ass or two once it happens.
I didn’t believe it when I heard it, but Bob Fowler at the News Sentinel reports that there will be no fireworks for Oak Ridge this year.
The folks at my favorite Liquor store, Oak Ridge Package Store, were talking about it. Then I overheard two guys grumbling about it at Wal-Mart. They said that the city bough fireworks, but failed to hire a qualified tech to light the fuses. I thought it must be a terrible rumor. But no, Fowler writes,
The Independence Day fireworks display in Oak Ridge has been cancelled because the city didn’t get a licensed “shooter’’ for the pyrotechnics.
So the city has $15,000 worth of bottle rockets and sparklers warehoused. Bailey “said he plans to talk to the city manager and will likely seek City Council input on rescheduling the display.”
Looks like the Norris fireworks show might have slightly larger crowd tonight.
Word on the street is that Boeing is going to be shuttering its Oak Ridge operations in 2008, officially for “lack of work”.
Says the Boeing peoples, in the Ridger of Oak:
“…the decision to end Oak Ridge operations was not related to a worker strike that lasted more than three months last year and resulted in significant layoffs.”
Hmm.