Last week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate carried a letter by resident Michael Rathsack pointing out some of the problems he had with “shopping locally” at Dominic’s Kitchen Store and Burke’s Books, two local retailers that recently closed their doors (“Shopping locally not as easy as it sounds,” April 8).

Other casualties over the last several weeks include Kelly’s Meats, Al’s Beef, V-Tone Vitamins and The Perfect Dinner, while Raffia moved to smaller quarters.  And since 2007 the Napleton car dealerships and various other retailers also closed their doors for good.  That’s a big bite out of the sales tax revenue the City used to count on.

Mr. Rathsack is spot-on when he notes that competition from large stores and the Internet, as well as “the limitations inherent in a small retail store,” makes the margin of error for local retailers slim and none – something that was lost on those mayors, City Council members and City staff who (per Mr. Rathsack) “saddled us with a TIF that is now sucking money out of the city budget because retail is not working to bring in tax dollars.”

Exactly…to the tune of close to $6 million and still counting!

But Mr. Rathsack gets it wrong when he appears to blame the TIF solely on the “new ‘independent’ council members” – presumably Alds. Don Crampton, Mark Anderson, Rex Parker and Jeff Cox, who in April 2003 defeated candidates from the then-dominant Homeowners Party.  The TIF was the brainchild of former City Mgr. Tim Schuenke and former mayor Ron Wietecha, and it was endorsed not only by the 4 “independents” but also by the remaining 10 Homeowners Party aldermen.

Almost as soon as they passed the TIF ordinance in August 2003, Wietecha resigned and fled to Barrington.  The task of bringing the TIF-funded Uptown Redevelopment project to fruition fell to Wietecha’s successor, Homeowners Party alderman Mike Marous, who was so instrumental in getting it done that Ald. Parker proposed naming the signature structure at six-corners the “Marous Building.”

Thereafter, as reported in the H-A’s January 19, 2006, edition, then-mayor Howard Frimark listed one of his 2006 goals thusly: “I would like to get to a point where downtown Park Ridge and all of Park Ridge are a shopper’s destination.”  But when that didn’t happen, the pie-in-the-sky, pro-retail folks came up with plenty of scapegoats, starting with a “shortage of good retail space” and the City’s “unfriendliness” to business. For the past couple of years, “the economy” has been the most convenient alibi.

Since 2004, however, we have seen the City’s quasi-public Economic Development Corporation (“EDC”) voluntarily disband (right around the time the City finally began requiring ethics disclosures from its members) and the City subsequently hired and later released its in-house economic development director, Kim Uhlig.  Neither the EDC nor Ms. Uhlig was able to attract the kinds of businesses Park Ridge residents claim they want.

But now that we’ve seen the quasi-governmental EDC and the solely governmental Ms. Uhlig fail to improve our stagnant retail situation, maybe it’s time to try a purely private-sector homegrown solution: the Chamber of Commerce.   After all, isn’t the Chamber comprised of successful Park Ridge retailers?  Who better to take on this task?

Unfortunately, the Chamber’s website reveals that only 2 of the 16 current Chamber officers and directors – the owners of TeaLula and Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory – appear to be conventional “retailers.”  The other executives look to all be service providers, with several in the non-profit sector (such as the president, from Rainbow Hospice; and the president-elect, from Resurrection Health Care).  Have any of them, or even executive director Gail Haller, ever run a retail business?  Successfully?

We note from its website that the Chamber has a “Retail Committee,” which suggests that those members might be the proper core group to undertake the task of providing direction and mentoring of new and current businesses.  We’re not saying it will be an easy task, but the axiom “retail begets retail” has been thrown around enough to convince us that this kind of initiative is worth a try. 

Unless, of course, even the Chamber already has silently resigned itself to the view that we get, and will continue to get, exactly the kind of retail we deserve.

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