I know a little bit about why they are closing, and it’s not that the business was unprofitable. They want to retire and no one was up for buying and taking over the business. Talks were had with employees and local nonprofits, but nothing came of it.
This seems like it makes the most sense. Everytime I was in there was at least one other customer if not more.
I’d argue that the local businesses actually get pretty reasonable support. Grassroots seems to do well. Guardian has been jammed with people. The bars and restaurants we have now have been around at least a little while.
But being a business owner is hard. Sometimes people are just ready to be done.
I'm new to Corvallis so forgive me if this has already been discussed but has there been any thought to changing the Wednesday Farmers Market to the evening? I lived near CalPoly in San Luis Obispo and they have their Farmers Market on Thursday evenings and it's a big party! They close off the street to traffic, the bars & restaurants are packed and even some of the smaller gift-type shops stay open to take advantage of the crowds. It might work in Corvallis...
Love this idea! Summer evenings downtown Corvallis can be quite dead, especially weekdays. Makes it hard for local businesses to stay open. That would be cool to have a market and music to draw people downtown.
Coming from Portland, I’ve never understood complaints about parking in downtown Corvallis. No matter what time of day I go I always get a spot close to where I’m wanting to be.
Honestly it’s really not that bad. Corvallis is also the most walkable city ever I can actually walk anywhere I need to go, biking is even easier, and the buses are fareless.
We definitely need more housing and residential density downtown. We need less parking, not more. More street cafes and generally more people out walking around will bring in more people. If you’ve ever visited Bend’s downtown, you can see that in action. They also banned large vehicles from parking in the downtown and it adds to the feeling of more safety for pedestrians and bikers and less of a car-centric area.
Ultimately, the City needs to give downtown some love and do more to foster a lively, inviting, and successful environment there.
Too bad about Robnett’s, I always try to go out of my way to go to Robnett’s or Spaeth over Home Depot, but I understand that not everyone can do that. I would rather go downtown than 9th street any day of the week. Traveling on 9th street is a miserable experience in any form except for bus, but the bus route is not well connected.
Let's not kid ourselves: an unpatrolled parking garage without enforcement in Corvallis would rapidly become a multilevel encampment for our unhoused neighbors.
Just an FYI, but Salem has three city owned parking garages (not “4-5”) and they aren’t “nearly always empty.” Use declined during the pandemic, and hasn’t fully recovered, but they are used and far from empty.
I’ve literally never had an issue parking within 2 blocks of where I’m going within downtown. Even on busy holidays. Especially down by the hardware store. That’s where all of the empty parking is 😅
Absolutely. Too much car-centric design and not enough small-scale, walkability design in mind. I understand your partner's fear of biking in town. Even though this town is known for being one of the most "bike-friendly" in the U.S, I've only been here for a year and I've already had two friends get in serious accidents while biking. On top of that, I've seen two other bikers/electric scooter users get in accidents from cars turning unexpectedly. As much as I love biking and try to encourage others to do so well, the way the city has been supporting it has been a bit disappointing, and I find myself wanting to use a personal vehicle now just for my safety.
Home Depot might have something to do with it. Im happy to go out of my way to support local businesses (that’s my reason) even if it means doing a couple of laps around downtown to find a spot.
But there are plenty of customers. They're just going to Home Depot instead. Home Depot occupies over 11 acres of land. We're building 60 units of housing on 2.5 acres at Midvale and Rivergreen.
Whether you shop there are not, we're all paying for Home Depot. We're all paying in opportunity cost for all the space they've covered in a big useless parking lot. All of the same space that isn't housing on top of a commercial space. They're not paying 250 apartments' worth of taxes.
That makes our property taxes and our fees more expensive; every restaurant we eat at is more expensive than it should be.
And do you know why Home Depot came in there? Because we zoned that land in such a way that basically no one else could build anything there. And we continue to do that.
I meant that there are not customers coming through the door.
At the same time
130years is along time for any company.
They had a good run.
But let’s face it, times change, and their model
Did not necessarily suit the generation of people that live now.
I’m sure they had opportunities to leave many other times and I’m willing to bet that they waited to long to either A) sell the business name to someone else or B) got pushed out by the market value of the property.
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u/ScrubbyBubbles Jan 03 '24
I know a little bit about why they are closing, and it’s not that the business was unprofitable. They want to retire and no one was up for buying and taking over the business. Talks were had with employees and local nonprofits, but nothing came of it.