Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Streetscaped out of La Mesa Village
“You have sell a lot of candles to pay a $5000 lease.”
After taking the picture, store owner Frank Dittmer closed the store and went home for the day.
Walking through the La Mesa downtown area known as the Village, it is striking to see numerous signs testifying to change in this area of small businesses: real estate and property management signs, in the windows of Lars Construction, San Flippos’s Pizza, Handful of Wildflowers, What a Dish, and the Country Loft.
Blumenthal Jewelers
Other signs indicate businesses are closing, such as Antiques @ the Village and Blumenthal Jewelers. And still other signs tell of businesses that have moved, such as Don Keating Motors and Shakespeare’s Corner Shop.
Some of the businesses, like San Filippo’s Pizza and the Country Loft, are reportedly closing or leaving their current sites because the owners are retiring. Others have spoken about other changes underway in La Mesa, including periodic festival events like Oktoberfest.
In 2015, the elimination of the artist and craft theme, together with the reduction in size and times, led some to conclude Oktoberfest may be part of the past and not the future.
The former owner of now-closed Handful of Wildflowers, Sherri Buck, may have best captured those sentiments when saying, “The city doesn't care about the festivals.” This was echoed by one of her customers, longtime La Mesa resident Gayle Cates, who observed, “Those days are gone.”
For other small businesses, the nearly 18 months of construction associated with the La Mesa Streetscape project may have effectively sounded a death knell.
What a Dish, one of the shops that is closing, has been owned and operated by Frank Dittmer for roughly three years. According to Dittmer, “Over half of my time in business was destroyed by La Mesa’s street-improvement project.”
Attributing a 75 percent drop in sales to the construction, Dittmer observed that parts of La Mesa Boulevard were closed during some of the “busiest shopping days of the entire year”; specifically, the two weeks prior to Christmas in December 2015.
Illustrating the impact of Streetscape construction on his business, Dittmer provided two photographs. In one, the street construction in front of his storefront shows that neither motor vehicle nor pedestrian traffic was possible. In the other, taken shortly after he arrived to open the store one morning, he found that the construction workers had “chained off” the entry to his store, even placing a lunch cooler in the entryway.
Former site of Keating Motors
After taking the pictures, Dittmer closed the store and went home for the day. Once more the construction made it virtually impossible to run his business; there had been no coordination with Dittmer by city hall or the construction company.
One new business owner, Aaron Henderson of soon-to-open Public Square, commented about coming to the village after the construction associated with Streetscape was completed.
“Previous folks were losing thousands of dollars a month due to the construction,” said Henderson. “And that’s a pretty common story for businesses here in the village.”
The reported sharp rise in lease costs after the completion of Streetscape could also be a contributing factor to the store closures.
Noting that one storefront will now lease for $5000 per month, Dittmer mused that maybe the arts-and-crafts mom-and-pop businesses are being priced out of the village because “you have sell a lot of candles to pay a $5000 lease.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
Streetscaped out of La Mesa Village
“You have sell a lot of candles to pay a $5000 lease.”
Streetscaped out of La Mesa Village
“You have sell a lot of candles to pay a $5000 lease.”
After taking the picture, store owner Frank Dittmer closed the store and went home for the day.
Walking through the La Mesa downtown area known as the Village, it is striking to see numerous signs testifying to change in this area of small businesses: real estate and property management signs, in the windows of Lars Construction, San Flippos’s Pizza, Handful of Wildflowers, What a Dish, and the Country Loft.
Blumenthal Jewelers
Other signs indicate businesses are closing, such as Antiques @ the Village and Blumenthal Jewelers. And still other signs tell of businesses that have moved, such as Don Keating Motors and Shakespeare’s Corner Shop.
Some of the businesses, like San Filippo’s Pizza and the Country Loft, are reportedly closing or leaving their current sites because the owners are retiring. Others have spoken about other changes underway in La Mesa, including periodic festival events like Oktoberfest.
In 2015, the elimination of the artist and craft theme, together with the reduction in size and times, led some to conclude Oktoberfest may be part of the past and not the future.
The former owner of now-closed Handful of Wildflowers, Sherri Buck, may have best captured those sentiments when saying, “The city doesn't care about the festivals.” This was echoed by one of her customers, longtime La Mesa resident Gayle Cates, who observed, “Those days are gone.”
For other small businesses, the nearly 18 months of construction associated with the La Mesa Streetscape project may have effectively sounded a death knell.
What a Dish, one of the shops that is closing, has been owned and operated by Frank Dittmer for roughly three years. According to Dittmer, “Over half of my time in business was destroyed by La Mesa’s street-improvement project.”
Attributing a 75 percent drop in sales to the construction, Dittmer observed that parts of La Mesa Boulevard were closed during some of the “busiest shopping days of the entire year”; specifically, the two weeks prior to Christmas in December 2015.
Illustrating the impact of Streetscape construction on his business, Dittmer provided two photographs. In one, the street construction in front of his storefront shows that neither motor vehicle nor pedestrian traffic was possible. In the other, taken shortly after he arrived to open the store one morning, he found that the construction workers had “chained off” the entry to his store, even placing a lunch cooler in the entryway.
Former site of Keating Motors
After taking the pictures, Dittmer closed the store and went home for the day. Once more the construction made it virtually impossible to run his business; there had been no coordination with Dittmer by city hall or the construction company.
One new business owner, Aaron Henderson of soon-to-open Public Square, commented about coming to the village after the construction associated with Streetscape was completed.
“Previous folks were losing thousands of dollars a month due to the construction,” said Henderson. “And that’s a pretty common story for businesses here in the village.”
The reported sharp rise in lease costs after the completion of Streetscape could also be a contributing factor to the store closures.
Noting that one storefront will now lease for $5000 per month, Dittmer mused that maybe the arts-and-crafts mom-and-pop businesses are being priced out of the village because “you have sell a lot of candles to pay a $5000 lease.”