The Cheapo Recorxs in Uptown Minneapolis is closing this fall, to be replaced by one of those ofay, mixed use condominium buildings that are starting to choke the neighborhood.
To which many of my readers will say “meh”. Shopping for physical things in stores is passé, were told.
I think it’s a huge loss. Partly it’s because I hate shopping online. Having worked in e-commerce, I don’t trust e-commerce.
More so it’s because, like bookstores – which we are also told are on the way out – they are relics from the time before social media, when people actually had to be social to do things like, you know, buy music and books.
Our devices have convinced many of us that we are always more busy than we used to be, and that more than a few minutes browsing for music — especially something other than an MP3 or stream — is outdated. Why spend even a couple minutes walking down aisles just to find the genre of your choosing when a search bar awaits?
Of course, there are still music stores out there; Hymie’s, The Electric Fetus, and if you’re into hip-hop, Urban Lights are all thriving.
Those are, of course, all “curated” stores – meaning that the music you find is dependent on the taste of the “curator”. Don’t get me wrong – some of those “curators” are excellent.
But how do you replace the broad, sweeping unpredictability of a Cheapo?
And don’t say “on iTunes” or “try Spotify!”. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not like I’ve never downloaded or streamed music. But shopping for our music and books in the same place we do our Facebook cat pictures, our taxes, our blogging? Why not do all of our eating and sleeping in the same place, while were at it?
While I far prefer having the physical medium over relying on volatile digital storage (and I absolutely love people that sell their CD’s at garage sales for a buck or less because “I’ve got it all on my ipod!”), and nothing at the consumer level beats the sound of a needle in a vinyl groove…
…Cheapo’s name is as apt as Best Buy’s is.
I agree with the sentiment. Sadly too many of my fellow liberals (at least the ones over 40) think the solution is government regulation ala ‘lets make Dinkytown a historic district’. This is a clear case of government being the problem. If it was legal to build “ofay, mixed use condominium buildings” in 100% of Minneapolis instead of just a few limited areas and to build them much taller and with less required parking, there would be far less rent pressure on retail shops in high density areas like Cheapo. As a bonus, if there were more people living in neighborhood, Cheapo would have far more customers.
To compete with the internet, shops like Cheapo need cheap rent and lots of local/walk-in customers. Current city land use policies discourage those.
I think the zoning issue is bogus, really. I remember going to Hegewisch Records on U.S. 30 outside of Merrillville, IN, as a kid. Always plenty of customers, nowhere near any housing.
Plus, consider why New York has a lot of vibrant neighborhoods with this kind of thing today; they had a few mayors who decided that it wasn’t acceptable to have neighborhoods that resembled Gary or Detroit. After a few years, people started moving into those neighborhoods because they no longer resembled Gary or Detroit.
So if you want Dinkytown to have the cool places it used to, interestingly you’ve got to clean up some of the surrounding neighborhoods. Then people will enjoy both.
Zoning is not an issue in Merrivlle because it is a low density city, 1061 ppl per square mile. Land is plentiful and so if you can’t build as much as you want on a lot, it is relatively cheap to get more land. Minneapolis density is much higher, 7417 ppl per square mile. So if zoning prevents you from building as much as you want on a lot, it is very expensive to get additional land.
The current efforts to ‘protect’ Dinkytown via more zoning restrictions are not the result of too few people trying to live/build there, but too many. ‘Cleaning up’ the surrounding neighborhoods would just increase those pressures.
Rick, try to stay on task here. When I talk about cleaning up neighborhoods, I am not talking about evicting everybody. I am talking about putting criminals behind bars where they belong so people don’t fear to move to those neighborhoods. That, in turn, would reduce the demand for living in the nicer neighborhoods and eliminate the need for huge condos.
Which would, in turn, ahem, reduce the stress on surface streets. Wins all around.
And the point about my favorite childhood record store is precisely that high density is not necessary to vibrant shopping. Which is another reason why your point about zoning is so off.
BB: I don’t think high density is necessary for retail success. Even very low margin retailers can thrive in both high and low density environments. My point was that low margin retailers in high density areas need relaxed zoning to survive. Otherwise, the government restrictions on land use will drive rents too high for a low margin retailer to make it. Zoning restrictions in a place like Merriville don’t matter, because land is cheap. Low margin retailers need cheap rent. Low density cities have cheap rent b/c demand is low. High-density cities, can have cheap rent only if they relax their zoning limits.
I misunderstood your point about Dinkytown. Yes making adjacent neighborhoods more livable would draw residents from Dinkytown and might spread housing costs more evenly across the city. But that alone will not increase the total supply of housing in the city and do nothing to reduce housing costs overall. If you improve the adjacent areas, whatever savings you get from reduced demand for Dinkytown will be lost due to higher costs in the adjacent areas. To reduce total housing price, you need to increase total supply. Since we can’t build more land, we need bigger buildings on the land we have.
BB: I don’t think high density is necessary for retail success. Even very low margin retailers can thrive in both high and low density environments. My point was that low margin retailers in high density areas need relaxed zoning to survive. Otherwise, the government restrictions on land use will drive rents too high for a low margin retailer to make it. Zoning restrictions in a place like Merriville don’t matter, because land is cheap. Low margin retailers need cheap rent. Low density cities have cheap rent b/c demand is low. High-density cities, can have cheap rent only if they relax their zoning limits.
I misunderstood your point about Dinkytown. Yes making adjacent neighborhoods more livable would draw residents from Dinkytown and might spread housing costs more evenly across the city. But that alone will not increase the total supply of housing in the city and do nothing to reduce housing costs overall. If you improve the adjacent areas, whatever savings you get from reduced demand for Dinkytown will be lost due to higher costs in the adjacent areas. To reduce total housing price, you need to increase total supply. Since we can’t build more land, we need bigger buildings on the land we have.
Rick, once again, you’ve got the exact wrong solution. If you relax zoning–little things like required offstreet parking for those living in those ten story condos you seem to love so much (ICK)–then everybody parks in front of the record store. Then it doesn’t matter what the rent is because nobody can get there.
Rent matters, yes, but only when you’ve got the bigger issue of transportation solved. And you can’t solve it–at least not since Karl Benz and Henry Ford came on the scene–without providing for the automobile.
And again, if you want reasonable rents, then you’ve got to answer why you’ve got large swaths of the city where either (a) no one can build or (b) no one wants to buy property there. Third issue; urban “redevelopment” funds that inflate rents downtown. And key player in promoting all three disfunctions is….the DFL, of course.
Here’s a bit more on bigger buildings:
http://www.losttribeofeverton.co.uk/
More or less, when you get too big, you don’t get much higher density, but you do get a lot higher crime, a la Cabrini Green, Pruitt-Igoe, and the Robert Taylor Homes. No thank you. And building that tall takes a lot of cash, too.