This past week, Q-line asked: What mix of businesses would you like to see on the Promenade and its surrounding areas? Should all businesses have equal access or should City Hall closely regulate the balance of independent owners and corporate chains?
Here are your responses: ✆ “I’m very unhappy with what Santa Monica has done. I’ve lived here for 40 years, and it has just screwed up the whole Third Street Promenade. There are no stores there anymore for low-income senior citizens. Everything is owned by corporations with outrageous prices. We had a Woolworth’s on Third Street where everything you wanted was there. We had a JC Penny where everything was reasonable. Now, the senior citizens cannot shop anymore on the Promenade.” ✆ “I strongly believe, now that I’m disabled, that we need to have businesses on the Promenade that are wheel-chair-accessible. I think that City Hall should not regulate like they do.” ✆ “I think that we have enough chain restaurants and big corporate businesses. I think it could really be nice if Santa Monica had some unique little shops and restaurants. We need that badly because it looks like any other place. It would be nice to have something unique about Santa Monica, other than the trashy people that are hanging around.” ✆ “I would prefer to see more independent merchant owners on the Promenade. In certain areas, it’s getting so boring. You walk down there and you can see the same shopping facades anywhere.” ✆ “I’d like to see a couple of nice whorehouses and a few good bars on the Promenade and the surrounding area.” ✆ “This is the kind of downtown this is. The only way to be successful is to allow Wal-Mart Target, drugstores and popular names restaurants to open up. If not, they will open and shut up as in the past. Out-of-towners come in and see thousands upon thousands roam and wander around. Oh boy, we’ll make a fortune if we open up some dumb business, it just doesn’t work that way.” ✆ “The first prerequisite for any person going into business is for that person to be masochistic. It starts with ‘the customer is always right.’ Then compounded by high rent, insurance, advertising, sales, taxes, accounting fees, shortage of wholesale inventories and finding dependable staff. And lastly, the stipulations imposed by the city.” ✆ “The more corporations that come in Santa Monica, to the Third Street Promenade, the more charm that’s taken away from Santa Monica. The little stores are what give this city its charm.” ✆ “You can see all these chain stores anywhere, they’re boring, they’re all alike. We should not let chain stores in Santa Monica. They should get rid of Barnes & Noble and replace it with the Midnight Special Bookstore.” ✆ “I’d like to see very few corporate businesses and a lot of local ones on the Promenade. If they want to go to Wal- Mart, let them drive to Downey.” ✆ “Well it’s obvious the little guy is out in Santa Monica, as far as the downtown area is concerned. The rent can only be paid by the big corporation so why even ask a question that we don’t even have an input about.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 17, 2004. Read the original PDF.