Downtown trying to slow leak of sales

LOUISVILLE — In an ideal world, the sidewalks along Louisville’s Main Street would be filled with a steady stream of people poking their heads into sweet little shops, stopping for an ice cream or a cup of coffee, or sitting down for a meal with their friends and families.

But the reality is, Louisville is no longer the default destination for southeast Boulder County residents looking for a place to shop or a plate of spaghetti, and the charming downtown is experiencing a slow leak of sales to shops and restaurants beyond the city’s borders.

Eliza Swain, a downtown merchant for about two and a half years, considers FlatIron Crossing mall; a recent streetscape project that fancied up Longmont’s Main Street and made it more pedestrian friendly; and a retail advertising campaign subsidized by the city of Lafayette and wonders if her 400-square-foot store will survive the 14 months until the end of her lease.

“If only people knew it was here,” Swain lamented.

To sustain shops like Eliza’s Attic and Mudslingers Pottery Studio down the street, Louisville needs to generate more foot traffic and to do that will take a concerted effort.

“The larger stores, like Steinbaugh’s, you can’t expect to survive in today’s environment,´ said Arlin Lehman, vice president of Louisville’s Downtown Business Association. Steinbaugh’s was a longtime downtown hardware store. “But you certainly can expect to have enough traffic to sustain more the specialty kinds of retail stores.”

To help people get back in the habit of spending their dining and retail dollars in Louisville, the DBA has organized a 13-week Friday night street fair that begins June 7.

“I do think there is a momentum that has started,” Swain said. “They’re going to have that Friday night street fair, and that should help bring people to Main Street. Maybe they’ll just stroll along and discover us down here.”

To help get the word out about the large number of in-town shopping options, the Louisville Chamber of Commerce, with the blessing of the city, has organized the City Wide Business Association (CWBA). The group’s primary goal is to develop a newspaper advertising campaign that points out the many shopping options in town.

“We sat down and took a map of the city and came up with 11 or 12 separate, identifiable shopping areas within the city of Louisville,´ said Tom Frew, president of Heritage Bank Louisville and a founding member of CWBA. “Most anything you want to buy, you can find some place in town — if you are aware those businesses are there.”

While some merchants are quick to blame giant FlatIron Crossing mall for draining away their sales, Frew says the decline has as much to do with last year’s economic slump.

Louisville’s downtown district contributed $830,975 to the city’s tax coffers in 2001, down from $861,000 in 2000. Citywide sales tax collections dropped to $9.7 million in 2001, from $10.1 million the year before.

“A mall like FlatIron Crossing would certainly have an impact on any adjacent community. When something like that opens, existing businesses experience a drop,” Frew said. “It comes back given enough time, but businesses have to keep themselves out there in front of people.”

The CWBA campaign is open to all businesses, not just chamber members, Frew said. “If they’re a Louisville business, we’d like to have them participate.”

The group hopes to have the ad campaign running by July.Anchoring downtownThough downtown Louisville lost its anchor store — Steinbaugh’s — about a decade ago, Lehman says the area is fortunate to still have its city hall and library as main draws. The city has a wide range of restaurants — there the traditional spaghetti joints, The Blue Parrot and Pasquini’s, high-end fondue at the Melting Pot, a variety of Asian restaurants, the historic Old Louisville Inn, a couple of bakeries and sandwich shops and a Mexican restaurant.

Lehman said the DBA is not so worried about drumming up support for restaurants.

“We’re not trying to create the traffic necessary to support the restaurants,” he said. “That’s the task of a restaurant, to create the service and ambience that brings people in.

“But that doesn’t necessary work for retail, unless it’s destination retail, like a jewelry store that people really know about. For example, Eliza’s Attic, she’s borderline sustainable because she doesn’t have the traffic. It’s that kind of retail that suits an historic, unique downtown like Louisville, and that’s the kind of store that needs people traffic.”

Swain said she knows people look in the window of Eliza’s Attic, an eclectic gift shop that includes a groovy selection of antiques and collectibles from the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. “I see all these nose smudges on my window, so I think that people come and look in the windows after hours.

“Maybe they do come back,” she said.

Over the years, much downtown retail space has been snapped up for office uses. Architect Erik Hartronft converted the Steinbaugh’s building to the State Mercantile, which is now home to a handful of service businesses, a bank and a coffee shop. Even what was once a Laundromat has gone office. Though Lehman has perhaps added more office space to downtown than any other developer, he worries about losing the retail and dining amenities that make his downtown building more attractive to prospective tenants.

“If we don’t keep that alive, it’s just going to be come an office occupancy environment and that would be sad,” he said.

Lehman popped the top on an existing Main Street building to build a three-story home for his company, PDS Instrumentation Inc. Now he is constructing two huge office buildings that face Walnut and Front streets and will total about 30,000 square feet. About 20,000 of that will be office; the remaining 10,000 will be reserved for retail.

“If I can’t lease the space to retailers, I will go with total office space. But I sure hope to keep some amount of retail in downtown,” Lehman said.Where to parkAnother top-of-mind issue is parking. Most days, it’s not too tough to find a spot. But come Friday night, you might find yourself looking.

There are a couple of schools of thought. One suggests that downtown visitors should always be able to find a spot very near their destination. “But Pearl Street (in Boulder) is not like that, and it’s packed,” Swain said.

Others say vacant lots along Front Street, near the railroad tracks, should be developed into parking, similar to the lot north of the Old Louisville Inn. “I always get a spot — it may not be in front of where I’m going, but I think that’s OK,” Swain said. “I think it would be great to have more parking over by the tracks.”

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