Grassroots Groundswell

I know several people - friends and neighbors - with a strong interest in helping the North Plainfield community thrive. Unfortunately, they’ve found that approaching the borough council with ideas, as individuals, tends to lead to “Nice idea” pats on the head, and no concrete action.

One area where the borough council could take a better approach is incubating local small businesses, many of which are viable businesses offering vital goods and services that simply can’t afford Somerset St. commercial rents. The borough council could put together some combination of tax breaks and rent subsidies to allow local people to put sound businesses in vacant storefronts downtown. One scenario, adapted from Jane Jacobs’ proposals (Ch. 17 of The Death and Life of Great American Cities) about subsidizing dwellings, would peg commercial rents to a reasonable proportion of business income, with the difference between the tenants’ payments and “market rates” made up by a subsidy from the local and/or state government. As the business grew, the tenants’ share would increase and the subsidized share would decrease until the tenants were paying full market rates.

To head in this direction, however, people interested in pursuing it have to band together and put together a coherent plan to counter the apparent vacuum of ideas from the borough council. We might even be able to get something like the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia (thanks to Deborah for the lead) to open up downtown, to sustain community collaboration on such local initiatives.

On another subject, another friend steered me to the Wagner Farm Arboretum in Warren, as a model for the community farm at Villa Maria I posted about last week. (Thanks Jen).

Update 1/27/08: I recently learned that the owner of the restaurant at 503 Park in Scotch Plains considered opening his restaurant in North Plainfield on Somerset Street before choosing Scotch Plains. He chose Scotch Plains because he couldn’t afford the commercial rents on Somerset.