On your marks, get set, strollOn your marks, get set, strollNovember 28, 2003
This is the big day. Something uncontrollable comes over people and the need to shop until you drop comes upon them. If that is you, maybe it is time to think about shopping in your own back yard. A novel concept I am sure.
Over the past year the business environment in the area has been growing in leaps and bounds. Downtown Oakley and the city's shopping centers are full. Unfortunately, filled shops doesn't mean that business is happening. As a matter of fact, several businesses downtown say that although they have the items people are looking for the residents aren't shopping in their stores.
Many are particularly worried because new stores like Cost Plus and Bed Bath and Beyond have recently opened in the Slatten Ranch Shopping Center on Lone Tree Way in Antioch. One of the biggest fears small businesses have is that large retailers like those can sell goods similar to the handmade items they sell. This is an old an familiar story.
According to business owners like Yvonne Fee, who owns By Yvonne in downtown Oakley, there are many great deals to be found in Oakley if the shopper would just spend the time to come down and take a look. Fee's shop is located along Oakley's Main Street in a small shopping center. She, like other Oakley business owners, is finding it hard to attract local residents to stop by her store and see what she has to offer.
Similar comments have been uttered by other downtown merchants, such as the one about there being an invisible gate keeps Oakley residents from shopping past Oakley's Town Centre, where Albertsons and Rite Aid are located.
So what's the reason for this slowdown in downtown business. If you ask some local residents the answer is they can't get out of their cars downtown without fearing for their lives. Others say that they shop where they work, and still others complain that despite the fact they have lived in Oakley for years they don't know what businesses are located here.
Whatever the reasons, know that the merchants are looking for a chance to introduce themselves to you. That is why they have come up with the idea of the Oakley Chamber Holiday Stroll. The idea is for members of the community to look to Oakley businesses when they do their shopping this holiday season. Thirty-four businesses along Oakley's Main Street have come together to put on the holiday stroll.
The objective is to get people to come into their shops between Nov. 29 and Dec. 6. When customers come in to a participating merchant they will receive a card that has the names of all 34 businesses on it. Each business will stamp their space on the card and then, when the card is full, customers take it to Oakley's annual Christmas Tree Lighting on Dec. 6 at O'Hara Park where they will be entered in a drawing for a prize.
While these businesses would love to make sales for the holidays and are hoping that people will do the bulk of their shopping in town, one of the major goals is to just get people into their shops and aware that they are out there. Not all the businesses participating are retail sales businesses. Otherss on the list include dentists, insurance companies, the City of Oakley offices and even the Delta Family YMCA.
By the end of this weekend reports will be coming in from all over about the forecast the nation's retail market in the midst of the busiest shopping season of year. It would be wonderful if local cities with smaller retail bases got a little piece of the pie. It not only helps them, but in the long run shopping in your own community comes back to you in the way of tax dollars that pay for roads, infrastructure and so much more that will help Oakley be a better place to live.
Roni Gehlke's column on life in Oakley appears each week in the Brentwood News.
Distributed by the Contra Costa Times