Downtown Alive
April 28, 2009The 2009 Interactive Journalism class project will be Downtown Alive. Our audience is the downtown business community, its owners, managers, employees and customers. Our goal is to tell readers things they don’t know about downtown businesses, and particularly ideas about the future of downtown.
Your reporting experiences will drive this site. This is a heavy lifting week with site design and copy processing decisions to be made by the teams. But keep reporting top of mind as you proceed.
Here are our next steps:
Everyone: Business reporting. By next class, everyone will have completed three business profiles. That will give us 21 stories for our teams to post.
Design team: Matt, Evan, Klayr and Chris will register the site name with WordPress, give everyone administrative access; select a template and develop a custom header with image. Communicate this info ASAP so other teams can begin posting drafts. PLEASE post the projects ethics statement from our Ijournalism site.
Editing team: Matt, Andrea and Whitney. Editing team will compile and post existing copy and develop process for future copy. We will use AP style for this project.
Image team: Andrew, Evan and Andrea will create the process for selecting and displaying images.
Interactive team: Chris and Whitney will decide if the site will require preapproval for comments, or manage them after they’ve been posted. You’ll need posting guidelines. Also this team will develop strategies for drawing readers from other sites, for example Facebook and the Register Mail.
Project names nominees
Andrew:
The downtown Galesburg you never knew
Surviving and thriving on Main Street
Wal-mart be damned: Main Street businesses
The heart of Galesburg
Andrea
Downtown alive
challenges and triumphs: Galesburg downtown
The evolution of downtown business
Galesburg Downtown: Empty storefronts or full office buildings?
Chris
On the right track: Main Street’s future in Galesburg
Main street in the cornbelt
Sign of the Times: Galesburg’s Main Street
Killed by the mall
Whitney
The evolution: From cornfields to city lights
From Seminary to Beyond
Dream on Wal mart: Businesses unite
Living through dreams
Matt
Galesburg’s downtown: Thriving businesses & empty storefronts
A glimpse of downtown Galesburg
A view of Galesburg through the eyes of Knox students
Downtown, downtown, where have the businesses gone?
Evan
Living life on Main Street
Downtown’s not-so-hidden gems
Galesburg’s surviving infrastructure
Small town vs. Big Box
Klayr
The Galesburger: Where’s the meat?
Wares, lares and hares: downtown Galesburg
A Downtown Catalyst?
Main Street USA
DIY downtown: The energy of small business.
Mark me down for Brighter Life Book Store, which is located across from the Box. Brighter Life was on Henderson Street for a number of year’s and just moved downtown. In fact, tomorrow is the first day of business in the new location.
I got Ducky’s Formal Wear. I need a new Zoot suit, so I thought I would take a walk in there.
I have Crappy’s
Antique Mall
Cornacopia
radke’s furniture
Ducky’s Formal Wear
Daine Peters, owner and operator of Ducky’s Formal Wear on Main Street has been working for Ducky’s for the past 21 years. Two and a half years ago, she had the opportunity to buy out the Main Street store, from her partner and owner of Ducky’s Formal Wear, George “Ducky” Anthony.
During her 21 years working for Ducky’s, she has been at three of the four locations. Working in these different locations taught her that “personal connections are so much nicer in small towns than what they are when you get in the bigger areas” said Peters.
Instead of hiring a large staff of people, Peters works on the sales floor herself, with one full time employee and four part time employees.
“I want to work with the brides, I want to know what they want, I want to listen to what they have to say about things that maybe I don’t provide” said Peters.
Ducky’s has a period of four months without much business. April through October though provides much of the business for the year. Unlike many formal wear businesses, Ducky’s stocks their entire inventory in the store. Over 1000 tuxedos hang in the store. Renting suits is the main business, but Ducky’s also sells new and used suits.
Peters constantly looks for new areas to move the business into. Duck’s not only rents wedding related clothing, but also has a wedding invitation service. Peters though, is not trying to take business away from those who are already established in Galesburg. She often sends customers to other stores who have what the customer wants, instead of incorporating those items into her business.
Research is a large part of what Peters does. Statistically speaking, the average age of her female customer is 24.2 and for males it is 26.
Hair Focus on the Family
There’s a new barber/stylist in town in what may be a less than familiar location.
Buried deep in the Main Street Mall (the Grants Building formerly known as the Radio Village Mall), Cindy Hovey, owner/stylist, opened Hair Focus on the Family in January.
Although new to town—she moved to Galesburg from Kewanee three years ago after Wonder Bread transferred her husband—Hovey’s certainly not new to cutting hair; Hovey operated her own hair-cutting shop in Kewanee for 25 years.
What differentiates Hair Focus from many Galesburg is exactly what its name implies. Hovey feels comfortable and is experienced cutting all ages and kinds of hairs, and the shop has an atmosphere is appropriate for all ages.
One of only three tenants in the 20,000 square foot building business has been slow these last few months, but Hovey isn’t surprised.
And, right now she’s primed to enjoy the remodeling and increased traffic that will hopefully accompany the finished renovation.
“We are ahead of the game there,” she said. Since she’s new to town, Hovey thinks the Main Street Mall, empty as it may be, a better scenario for her than having a stand alone shop, and hopes benefit from enthusiasm for the structure.
A true test of barber/stylist loyalty, many of her former clients make the 40 or so mile drive from Kewanee for a haircut, and, Hovey, confident in her craft, hopes to establish that kind of connection with residents here.
“You know what they say, ‘One bad haircut—a lot of people find out. A couple of good haircuts—a few people hear about it,’” said Hovey who figures it’ll be at least six months until Hair Focus really becomes established.
“These things take time. In this business, it’s all word of mouth,” she added.
- Chris Mouzakitis
There has to be a more efficient way to do all this.
A Brighter Life Downtown
By Matthew Wheaton
For the past five days, there has been a brighter life on the corner of East Simmons and South Kellogg in downtown Galesburg.
Brighter Life Bookshoppe, which was once located on Henderson Street, opened for business in the former Illinois Power building, 292 E. Simmons, last Friday.
The business has been selling Christian books and more since 1986. Its owner for the past 17 years, Mary Spring, was not looking to relocate but eventually decided it was time for a change.
“Part of the reason why I moved here is due to the recession,” she said. “This is a nicer building with cheaper rent.”
Cheaper rent is not the only reason why Spring moved her business.
“There is going to be good things happening downtown. I get tired of the negativity. There is going to be a turnaround,” she said. “People enjoy being downtown.”
When downtown Galesburg booms again, Spring will have plenty of available parking spaces for her customers.
“We need more parking downtown that is why I did not move on Main Street,” she said. “With this location, we are right across the street from a city parking lot. This is perfect.”
With plenty of parking, business has been good in the new location so far, but Spring admits it has been a struggle owning her own business for the past 17 years.
“Hopefully, the economics will get better and I will not have to struggle so much,” she said. “I keep fighting that struggle, because it is more than a business to me. We have customers that we pray with, cry with, and laugh with. We go to their kid’s weddings. We go to their funerals. It is more like a ministry.”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37869027@N04/
Longtime commitment to quality
U.S. manufactured furniture and fabrics are becoming harder to find
By Klayr Valentine-Fossum
Since purchasing the Radke Fine Furniture store in 1977, owners Lyndon and Sherry Graham have developed a strong costumer base. “I’ve had costumers come in representing four generations,” said Lyndon Graham, “the name’s synonymous with furniture.”
The Graham’s moved the store from Henderson to Main street 32 years ago, they wanted to be downtown because “traffic was better, visibility was better [and] I had visions of expanding,” explained Lyndon. Since the move he has remodeled the basement and hopes to open the upstairs to take advantage of the large windows overlooking downtown to show off his product. The traffic into the store has not slowed down since the recent global economic downturn, though Lyndon believes the pastime of downtown weekend shopping now has to compete with alternative family activities, such as outdoor sports, which affects the downtown as a whole.
Lyndon attributes his retail stability to the three components the Radke business has become known for: quality, uniqueness, and low cost. However, as more furniture factories and fabric mills have gone out of business or outsourced to more cost effective countries, the first two components are becoming more difficult for the Grahams to provide. “You have to be very careful how you order,” said Lyndon, to make sure the product you are buying is of the best quality. Many of the unique fabrics used by factories in the past are no longer available, of the 13 major U.S. fabric mills, only one still exists, said Lyndon somberly. Nine tenths of the fabric the Grahams buy comes from off-shores, and a majority of it is synthetic microfiber. The furniture factories have also suffered from the fabric mills moving over seas, as many couldn’t complete and had to shut down when they couldn’t get the fabric they had previously purchased.
The Grahams have change their distributers, researching new companies they can buy from that still provide quality and prefer those corporations that manufacture in the United States. One of the companies the Graham’s do business with is Justice Furniture and Bedding, a Midwest dealer established in 1957. LaZboy is another company supplying Radke Fine Furniture. LaZboy manufactures from five plants in the United States, but are forced to buy fabrics and leathers from overseas, mainly from Brazil and Argentina in order to compete. Lyndon though sees leather becoming a domestic product as more livestock owners realize the dual market.
“When you buy quality you buy it once and if you don’t like it anymore it’s got retail value,” said Lyndon. “We have a service, we sell good quality and we stand behind it.”
Clean Cut: Swanson Barber Shop
By Andrew Polk
An inconspicuous little shop located on the corner of Town Square and Main Street, the first thing you notice walking into Swanson Barber Shop is the chair. An old leather upholstered and molded steel model, it hints at the history that is embodied within the business.
“I started with that chair,” Sherrill Swanson, owner of the store, said. “It’s been re-covered a time or two. It’s getting old and worn, like me. I don’t know who’s going to last longer, me or it.”
There is only one barber’s chair in the store, because Swanson handles each and every customer personally, running a one-man shop ever since he started in the business.
“I’ve barbered for 45 years, and I’ve been downtown for 39 years,” Swanson said. “It’s been about 22 years in this particular location, since ’87 I guess. [I started] downtown over on the square where the F&M Bank is at, the building is now gone. Then, for a short time, down two blocks on Main Street, that building is now gone too.”
Starting soon after high school, Swanson has seen the barber’s trade wane and wax as the decades passed.
“Over the years, it’s been good. I’ve seen a lot of changes,” Swanson said. “When I first started in April of 1964, there were fifty barbers in Galesburg. Today, there’s about 9. The primary reason for that is back then, along in the late 60s early 70s the long hair trend came in. The Beatles became popular, and everyone started letting their hair grow. At that point, they started going to the beauticians instead of the barber shops. We’ve gotten some of that trade back, but it hurt the trade, and that’s why we’re down from 50 to 9.”
Downtown has changed as well during that time.
“When I came downtown, it was before the mall, and before a lot of strip malls, and Henderson Street wasn’t as big as it is now, so there were a lot more businesses downtown,” Swanson said. “A lot more retail. All of the stores were full. The square over here had a lot of vacant buildings on it; they’ve cleaned that up on the South side of the square. I’ve seen two or three major fires of big buildings that burned. It’s just been a lot of changes.”
I’ve also got Cherry Street Guitar Co. and Creations by Carolina.