Grand Avenue Exit Interview
Yesterday we took a little mini road trip east to Wisconsin. Beatrix has a friend at Stout she wanted to visit, and we wanted to spend some time with our good friends Kelly and Laura, and so we all had a lovely time. Patrick and I even discovered a lovely new (to us) taproom, due to the magic of Craftapped.
But perhaps the most enlightening conversation we had was with James Williams. James and his wife Heather own the amazing Fox Den Books in River Falls, where we made a long stop to appreciate the used and new books, the games, toys, and craft items; I'm still coveting some of the embroidery kits. For many years, the Williams' also owned Sixth Chamber Used Books on Grand, right by Hamline (where Em Que Viet is now).
We adore James and Heather and their stores, and this was one of the fist times we had talked in depth about Sixth Chamber closing (Sixth Chamber lives on, by the way, in the ceiling of the cozy basement level of Fox Den, which is paneled with the wood from the shelving.)
James in particular mentioned two things instrumental in the great success of Fox Den in River Falls and the decisions that led to the closing of Sixth Chamber (for quite some time they ran both stores, until their rent went up dramatically for Sixth Chamber, meaning it would perhaps just break even while Fox Den was going gangbusters).
1. The community supports Fox Den
In the half hour that we were in the shop, another dozen or so customers came in. Each person bought at least one thing, even if if was a small pug toy that stuck out its tongue when you squeezed it, with a few loading up with armfuls of books. James said that was par for the course (my quote here is a paraphrase but accurate in tone):
"People here find it really important to support their local businesses. They know that if we close, they can't just drive somewhere else nearby and get what they want. They value who we are and what we provide to the community, and that makes them want to support us."
We saw this when we stopped briefly at the vintage store next door, and considered picking up cookies at Mei Mei's because we always like it so much when Mel brings them to us.
For Grand Avenue, what would that mean if people truly committed to buying from Perrier or First Grand, rather than spending $1.50 in gas to drive out to Total Wine in Woodbury to save $1 per bottle?
2. Demographic Shifts
I've had a little of this discussion before with James, but he went into more detail. We discussed how young families that had lived near the store had moved away, or the kids had grown up. Older people still bought for their grandkids, but not as much, and the young single people that moved in nearby almost never shopped at the store. For the families that did still live nearby, James said he rarely saw kids come in, pick up a book, settle down in a chair and spend the afternoon reading in the store anymore. Families that came in were tight on time and highly supervised, "we need to buy this game for Olivia's birthday party this afternoon and we need to GO!" This seemed to break his heart still — and Sixth Chamber closed back in 2019.
I spent my youth and teen years shopping on Grand entirely unsupervised. During elementary school, I stopped in Model Cleaners, and Begin's Deli, and Evergreen Plants, and the corner drugstore, almost every day on my walk home from school. I walked down to Haagen Daz and Odegaard Books at least weekly as a teen, or The Basket Shoppe and Hungry Mind. The beginning of my expectation that I would spend my money in my community started then.
I have read a lot of studies recently about exactly what has gone wrong recently on Grand, and I have A LOT of opinions (happy to discuss those with you in person). But really, don't listen to me. Listen to James, because a lot could be learned from his remarks — and changed in the trajectory of the street — if we just were a little more intentional.
(TL:DR - we don't need parklets and food trucks. We need purchasers and diners. We need true community support.)
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