Grassroots of Tarboro

After last night's Kiwanis Club meeting, Terry Smith (Daily Southerner) pulled a chair up beside me and pulled out his notepad. 

Today I opened the paper to an article headed Nesmith wants town to subsidize rent to attract new businesses.    Terry wasn't totally correct in that statement, but he wasn't far off base.  It's true that I think the money that the town council is considering to spend on an internet marketing firm should be spent on revitalizing the downtown.  It's also true that I admire how Selma's town council chose to subsidize rents for Antique shops and thus turned their little town into an antique-shoppers' Mecca.  Subsidizing rent to fill empty shops downtown is an avenue our town council should explore.  Our downtown needs revitalization both physically and economically.   A thriving downtown is essential to the health of a small town like ours.  Be it antiques, or arts and crafts, or casinos, or kaleidoscopes (it was just an idea), we need to determine what will draw people to OUR town. What will make Tarboro unique and ATTRACTIVE to visitors.

Just yesterday morning at 10:30 am I stood with my camera on Main Street looking north and took a picture of empty sidewalks and a few cars in the street. I turned looking south and the view was the same. 

I found a video online about Downtown Tarboro.   Watch it and tell me what you think.

"Shop til you drop in our wide array of unique specialty stores... be sure to bring your appetite when you come downtown because we have a number of restaurants specializing in world class cuisine guaranteed to tempt even the most finicky of taste buds...  "  

Sounds terrific, and may attract people to town, but what happens when they get here and find empty streets, a few stores, and restaurants that are closed on Saturdays. Even our visitors center is closed on Saturdays.

Do you think these folks will be pleased or disappointed?  Will they describe Tarboro as it was described in that video?  Will they recommend it to their friends? Will they come back again? 

As I pounded the pavement again this morning, delivering notices of an upcoming meeting to downtown businesses, I chatted with a few of the business owners about something Terry Smith had said to me the night before.  While discussing the idea of subsidizing rents for new businesses, Terry said "having a business downtown and paying my rent, I wouldn't like it if new businesses had their rent subsidized."  My reply to that, as a person who has a downtown business, "if subsidizing rents for one year helped to establish a strong and vibrant downtown then we would all benefit from the subsidies.  All businesses would do better,  folks owning the businesses would be making more money, they could hire employees, who in turn would be making money, this extra money would be spent in other businesses around town and VOILA our economic outlook is a little bit brighter."  Anything that helps the economy of this town, helps everybody in this town directly or indirectly.