I consider myself a savvy shopper. I check prices online and in-store and tend to avoid expensive places unless I need a few things I would have to drive to get elsewhere. The year is 2019, and we don’t have to be tied to our neighborhood geography when choosing where to buy groceries. With services […]
Yes, I know Wausau is in Wisconsin, but this Wall Street Journal article seems both locally important and interesting, and Wisconsin seems close enough to Minnesota right now. Check out this chart, showing growth in online retail in Wausau, Wisconsin, and the US: One big takeaway is that people seem to like small, local businesses, […]
Urban planning “locker room talk” — decrying sprawl, stroads, subsidies and other S words — doesn’t advance the dialogue, our author asserts.
Alex Schieferdecker turned me onto an old Citylab article about parking perception versus parking reality called Four Reasons Retailers Don’t Need Free Parking. It cites a (hard to find) study out of the UK which charted perceived mode-share versus actual mode share for a shopping street in Bristol, UK (a medium-sized city in the Southwest, population 450K). Here’s the chart […]
Here’s an important chart for you, showing something that the City Observatory cooked up called the “storefront index.” It measures the number of “customer-facing businesses” along city streets. Here’s the ranking [in absolute, not per capita, terms]: It looks like Minneapolis is punching a bit below its weight, though that might be accounted for by the […]
The Star Tribune republished an eye-catching NY Times story this weekend about waste from online shopping. Here’s the punchline of their piece: But measuring the effect of the cardboard economy is more difficult. There are possible trade-offs, for example. As people shop more online, they might use their car less. And delivery services have immense […]
I had a few minutes to spare in the general vicinity of downtown St. Paul, so I went on by to check out the Penfield. Because at the frequency at which I visit downtown St. Paul, it’s still something “new” over across the river. At the risk of going a little fanboy, it was great, […]
Our local grocery wasn’t really very local. It was a 68,000 sq ft Rainbow big-box that closed last fall. This made our nearest general grocery a big-box Cub Foods (90,000 sq ft?) that is three miles farther away (there is also a Fresh & Natural about a mile away that we use often but it does […]
As any local resident knows, “what’s wrong with downtown retail” is perennial topic of conversation that seems like it started with the opening of the first of our beautiful suburban malls. Even worse, everyone has an opinion. Unluckily for you, I have the keys to this blog, which means I get to share mine (and […]
Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, ’tis the season to show your loved ones you care with gifts that support their values.