It’s official: Springing for hummus and a chicken kebab at Andie’s does more for the city’s fortunes than spending the same money at Olive Garden. Or so says a just-released study commissioned by local business groups in rapidly gentrifying Andersonville, who hope the results will push local policy makers–and consumers–to support locally owned businesses like the ones that pack the neighborhood’s thriving Clark Street strip.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
In June 2003 Ann Christophersen, co-owner of Women & Children First, was talking up the Austin study at a local forum on sustainable business practices. Andersonville Chamber of Commerce director Ellen Shepard was in the audience, and soon after her office met with Civic Economics about conducting a similar study in Chicago.
Cunningham and Houston had been looking to do a follow-up project that would allow them to study a wider range of businesses, and Andersonville, with its dense strip of small businesses, was a perfect site–especially since by then Cunningham lived in the neighborhood. He and Houston figured they had a nice little nine-week job on their hands.
One reason for the discrepancy is that the cost of doing business in Chicago is higher for chains and independents alike, and the chains’ higher costs ratchet up their local contribution. Another is that many of the enterprises in the Chicago study–like restaurants and hair salons–are so labor-intensive that they put more wages back into the local economy than bookstores do, no matter who owns them. And no Chicago business outperformed its counterpart as spectacularly as Austin’s BookPeople beat Borders.
She got a big hand, but tough questions followed. The study was “much ado about nothing, in a neighborhood like this,” said Tim Rasmussen, owner of Charlie’s Ale House. His taxes tripled this year, but with his business thriving he’s not terribly worried. The real competitors–“big-box” stores like Target and Wal-Mart that can undersell smaller stores and draw consumers from a distance–aren’t about to open on Clark Street, he said, where there’s little parking and lots of traffic. “Here, you’re going to get a Starbucks,” he says, “but the danger is the Target that’s going to open up at Wilson Yard. And this neighborhood doesn’t have what it takes to combat that.”
Even if all the proposed solutions to the neighborhood’s worries have “unintended consequences,” Harris and Smith are hoping the MPC will have some bright ideas. The problem with a city ordinance barring chains, Harris points out, is that if rents rise past the point that local merchants can afford, “you end up with a vacant storefront.” Shifting property tax burdens off of resident commercial-property owners is “like squeezing a balloon,” he says. “You squeeze on one end and the other gets bigger.” Reduce property taxes on one group, and somebody else’s go up. Not to mention, says a local who didn’t want his name used, that independence in itself won’t keep a neighborhood healthy if there’s nowhere to buy toilet paper. “I’ve seen a lot of these neighborhoods develop and the stores that are needed are gone, and all you’re left with are boutiques and coffee shops.”
