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Monday, May 20, 2013
Saving the Oak Park Starbucks
by Steven Maviglio, published on April 22, 2009 at 10:41 AM
Storyline: In and Around Sacramento
When the Seattle-based Starbucks Corporation decided to shutter its Oak Park store on Stockton Boulevard, it sent shock waves throughout the neighborhood.
The Oak Park coffee shop is more than just a place to grab a cup of Joe; it's a community hang out. Civic groups meet there, art lovers visiting the 40 Acres gallery next door linger during Second Saturday, and it's one of the few places in North Oak Park where neighbors can get together.
Vice Mayor Lauren Hammond, Mayor Johnson, and community activists have been in touch with Starbucks to ask the company to reverse its decision. So far, the corporation isn't budging, saying it needed to close the store (along with more than 400 nationwide) to help its bottom line.
But neighbors aren't giving up. A new effort is being launched today to convince Starbucks to change its mind. Neighbors are hoping to gather 1,000 signatures in the next 24 hours.
Here's the link: http://www.inmycommunity.com/imc_joomla/.
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I would propose that Naked coffee rosters, whose roasting operation is only a couple blocks away, come in and hire all the old Starbuck's employees. Too good to be true?
As much as people don't like Starbucks, a lot of "casual" cafe-goers are probably more likely to go to a Starbucks than some place they've never heard of before - possibly making it even more difficult for a non-chain store to turn a profit in that location.
Places like neighborhood cafes often become more than just a place to buy coffee--it is a phenomenon documented in Ray Oldenburg's "The Great Good Place." They become third spaces, where community forms.
Of course the public outcry towards closing the Starbucks could go to show that I'm wrong, but I think any of the places mentioned could probably find a more attractive place for their next store.
I think OP needs a Magpie! Not alot of nutritious AND delicious eateries in this neck of the woods. OP needs wholesome eateries with good coffee.
We live in free market, if there is not enough demand, then let them close this location. What makes any of you think that a local business would do a better job than Starbucks?
This is the same kind of mentality that has led to the TRILLIONS of dollars in bail outs. Government needs to let the free market do what it does, correct itself without any government intervention. When did it become OK for the taxpayers to bail out every business that our corrupt politicians happen to like or receive campaign contributions from?.
If you want to help Starbucks, go buy a latte with your own money and don't force me at gunpoint to subsidize it. (try not paying your taxes)
1. A local business COULD do a better job than starbucks because it IS a local business, it COULD share a closer relationship with the community, which COULD result in greater profits. this is EXACTLY the reason why I avoid starbucks and frequent the local coffee shops instead.
2. As for this side issue of bailouts, you missed the point entirely. this whole "magic hand of the free market" is absolute nonsense, over-simplified to cover the complexity and uncertainty with the theory. With the bailout issue we face today, if we allow one huge company to die out, countless jobs would be lost, lowering consumer spending, and further harming the economy (and then multiply this times the number of companies dead). Government intervention is simply necessary to avoid a worse result. Also, the application of this free-market theory to our economic problems today would be most unwise - see the following about former federal reserve chief Alan Greenspan, a lifelong advocate of free markets:
Asked by committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, whether his free-market convictions pushed him to make wrong decisions, especially his failure to rein in unsafe mortgage lending practices, [Alan Greenspan] replied that indeed he had found a flaw in his ideology, one that left him very distressed. "In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right?" Waxman asked.
"Absolutely, precisely," replied Greenspan, who stepped down as Fed chief in 2006 after more than 18 years as chairman. "That's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence it was working exceptionally well."
Greenspan offered his re-examination as decisionmakers and the public are broadly questioning the deregulatory trend that dominated federal policymaking circles for three decades. Many now have concluded that lax oversight permitted bad housing loans to overwhelm the financial system. Even Republican presidential candidate John McCain vows much stricter regulation of Wall Street.
Fed watchers said they were stunned by Greenspan's mea culpa. For his whole adult life, the former Fed chairman has been a devotee of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who celebrated free-market capitalism as the world's most moral economic order and advocated a strict laissez-faire approach to government regulation of the marketplace.
"Alan Greenspan has been one of the stalwarts in arguing for free markets and he was backpedaling today," said Brian Wesbury, chief economist with the Illinois investment firm First Trust Portfolios.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/23/BUI513N8QM.DTL
BTW, there is no free market in this country. The "free market" that is espoused in this country is a very simplistic concept to address very complex situations.