Ever since the 1989 earthquake, local merchants and residents have been debating whether to keep Pacific Avenue one-way or make it two-way. The problem, says Robert Gibbs, a national retail consultant, is that right now Pacific cannot support any new businesses. If it went two-way, he says, new businesses would flock there, adding as much as $1.8 billion in new revenues to the economy and much-needed dollars to the city’s coffers.
Ever since the 1989 earthquake, local merchants and residents have been debating whether to keep Pacific Avenue one-way or make it two-way. The problem, says Robert Gibbs, a national retail consultant, is that right now Pacific cannot support any new businesses. If it went two-way, he says, new businesses would flock there, adding as much as $1.8 billion in new revenues to the economy and much-needed dollars to the city’s coffers.
The problem, according to many of the local merchants, is that they don’t really want the kind of stores that Gibbs suggests, which mainly consist of local outlets of national chains like Target and Home Depot. Some merchants said that the focus should be on quality, though a few others opined that chains are inevitable.
Read more at the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
