Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Prior to allowing my fingers to type down memory lane, I'd emailed Ann Lagasse.

I wanted her to know I was going to write a post on how merchants used to complain about the tactics used by Piper Properties, which were strikingly similar to those employed by Steve Karp in Newburyport.

Specifically, the merchants didn't like to be told when to open their stores. They also didn't like sharing their financial information. I can't blame them, but I guess there's a price of doing business on State Street.

Anyway, Ann replied this morning to the issue about store hours. She didn't address the financial part of the question but I did restate it so I might have more on that later today.

Her reply.

Thanks for the email and the opportunity to comment. Yes, we do have hours of operations in our leases why - first we want a year round downtown economy. We don't want seasonal businesses. Newburyport is a commercial business center that serves the area 12 months a year and we want merchants who understand that. In terms of hours, the good retailers are open more hours than described in our leases. We want merchants - not hobbyists running stores. The successful retailers are frustrated when their neighbors don't keep consistent hours. They know it hurts the downtown. Customers get mad and probably won't come back. In a chamber meeting probably 5 years ago, a long time merchant downtown (not our tenant) told the retail committee who was discussing downtown shopping hours - 50% of his sales occur after 5 o'clock. Good retailers get it !

Note: Ann didn't provide the name, but I did delete two words that would have identified the merchant. Only seemed fair.

So while Steve Karp's tactics in Nantucket might seem heavy handed to some. They won't be all that unfamiliar to merchants in town.

Thanks to Ann for taking time to reply.

By the way, what happened to the Nantucket North Series? I was a bit disappointed today.