Larchmont Residents Tackle Business District Issues

How many business owners does it take to improve the state of Larchmont's business district?

Answer: About 70, marker in one hand and margarita in the other.

And all of them turned up at Tequila Sunrise last night to put their minds at work for over three hours. Organized by the Larchmont Chamber of Commerce, the event aimed to involve the district's shoppers and owners in identifying the main problems affecting business in Larchmont and coming up with and implementing solutions.

Now, how do you make 70 eager people come up with only four solutions without unleashing chaos?

Answer: You ask Larchmont resident Jeffrey Shaffer to facilitate the process by dividing the crowd into groups and giving them the right supplies.

"The issues Larchmont is facing are indicative of the great turnout tonight," said Chamber President Jeff Rosenberg in his opening remarks, emphasizing that he wanted people to get involved, as opposed to only telling him what the problems are.

Larchmont Trustee and most likely future Mayor Josh Mandell made it clear that, while one can't control the economy, there are things to be done around here. "We are all gathered here for a reason, because things are tough out there," he said.

Mandell talked about the capital improvement project on Palmer Avenue, which would be one of his administration's top priorities, if and when he is elected. "We want this place to be the first people come to," he said. 

And those in attendance took his words seriously. "We will try to get to a solution tonight through collaboration," said Shaffer, who has worked in marketing for over 25 years and now has a new business, Flywheel Accelerated Solutions.

Shortly after, the crowd split up into six different groups and came up with the district's top four problems:

1) Residents are not shopping locally. This could be, according to some residents, because there is not a wide enough variety of stores and people are doing more online and "big box" store shopping nowadays. Problem #2, coming up, might also have something to do with it, they say.

2) There is a lack of parking, worsened by employees and business owners taking up potential shoppers' spaces.

3) There are too many and too-hard-to-comply-with town regulations. In sum, business owners say the Village is not making it easy to open a store in Larchmont.

4) Landlords are uncooperative. Ideally, they would lower rents and make their empty store fronts look nicer, some said. 

A few hours and many presentations later, everyone agreed that not all problems could be solved at one time, and that attracting complementary stores, doing away with obstacles for newcomers, attracting new customers and having a better relationship with landlords was a good place to start. 

The Chamber asked participants to sign up for committees to put the night's findings to practice. The Chamber has a list with everyone's contact information and will next get them together as a committee. Their reports will be revealed at the Chamber's next general meeting.

At the end of the night, Shaffer admitted he had initially worried about getting people to think beyond the issue of empty stores, but was amazed at the results. 

"By people signing up for committees, they are going to take action," he said. "They see that there's a plan. That was the goal, to keep them beyond complaining. They want the Chamber to fix things, but the truth is they are the Chamber."