Vacant Storefronts Get a Makeover

First come the signs declaring “Everything Must Go;” then, it’s the business itself that’s gone.

Nearly 20 Summit merchants have closed for good since the start of the financial crisis a year ago, leaving Springfield Avenue and its side streets with a slew of vacant storefronts.   

But several landlords, along with Summit Downtown Inc.,  have gotten creative in their use of shop windows, attempting to minimize the visual impact of closings by ensuring that vacant doesn’t have to mean empty.  

On Sunday, inside the former Verizon Wireless store on Beechwood Road, Lori Dahl, a broker/sales associate with Coldwell Banker and a board member of Summit Downtown Inc., fixed a suction-cup hook to the store’s front window and hung a tissue-paper stuffed maroon bag with the group’s motto on it: “See It. Shop It. Live It. Summit." Around town, Dahl has filled four other storefronts with the bags.  

“We’re very aware of all the stores and vacancies,” said Dahl. “Everybody’s trying to have there be as little vacant space as possible so that it’s the most attractive for anybody walking through town.”

Members of Summit Downtown Inc., which collects dues from local merchants and reports to Summit’s Common Council, considered filling storefronts with student artwork, but embraced Dahl’s proposal to use the bags for their ease of installation and uniform look, she said. The low-key display also enables prospective tenants to view the size of the store – a feature important to landlords, she said.  Any property owner interested in having bags installed in their windows can call her, she said.

“Rather than just be vacant with brown paper behind, it’s got a more friendly look which is what we’d like people to know about Summit,” Dahl said.  

Dahl also hopes people who see the logo will embrace its message. Summit’s downtown should be a destination for residents of Summit and its surrounding communities, she said.

“If you need to buy something, if you’re going to dinner, there’s a lot of things you can do in Summit,” she said.

Around town, some vacancies are the result of merchants’ building-hopping as new space becomes available and they push landlords for lower rents.

Broker George Paras, of Paras & Paras, which represents another Springfield Avenue building owner, said times are extremely tough for Summit’s retailers, and by extension, city landlords. He said he did not expect the retail climate to change until the unemployment rate drops, but said cosmetic changes to empty storefronts are a good idea.

“It gives the downtown a look of stability, which is a good thing,” said Paras.“I don’t know that other towns are being as creative.”

The windows of the former Union Center National Bank, located in the Bassett Building on Springfield Avenue, are now filled with a large display of furniture and other home decor items from The Summit Sampler, which holds a storefront in the same building on the corner of Beechwood Road. Both businesses shared a landlord in Hugo Pfaltz, owner of Bassett & Associates, who said The Summit Sampler pays no additional rent for its use of the former bank.

 “The space was there,” he said.

Pfaltz pointed to the building’s history as context for today’s high vacancy rates.

“The Bassett Building was finished in 1929, and it was very difficult to get tenants,” he said. “It didn’t get fully-tenanted until 1970. That’s forty years. Now of course, tenancies are shaky, some of them. There are many businesses that are suffering. But in a way, we’re getting better. Big firms are downsizing, so we’re getting the down-sizees.”