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Health & Fitness

Wow! There Are a lot of Commercial Vacancies in Simsbury, Avon and Canton

Simsbury, Avon & Canton are littered with commercial/retail vacancies. What is Simsbury's Economic Development Commission doing to attract accretive business to town versus feeding the Zero Sum Game?

In my last blog posting ( to refresh your memory) I talked about how too much development in Simsbury and surrounding towns feeds an economic Zero Sum Game.

In this Zero Sum Game, too little current development generates organic accretive economic growth - rather new development merely serves to take revenue from another existing business.  Build a new hardware store and it tends to just take business away from a nearby existing hardware store.  Build a new donut shop and likely a large proportion of its revenue comes from existing sales at other nearby donut, bagel or coffee shops.  While this is inherently capitalistic, it is not necessarily fine from a community economic vitality perspective because it can result in over-building, excessive vacancies, blight, and overall reduced property valuations as the inevitable revenue dilution of all businesses in a category experience reduced profits and some sputter and later fail.

I think this is a very important concept for us to all understand and pay careful attention to as we advocate for responsible expansion in our town.  Because I’m sure you’ve noticed, as I have, the vast number of retail and business vacancies all around us.  You can’t drive up and down Routes 10 and 44 without seeing the litany of FOR SALE, FOR RENT, BUILD TO SUIT and other such signs all over the valley.  The owners of those properties are screaming at us in a very crowded commercial real estate market… “PLEASE RENT ME NOW”, “BUY MY LAND”, “TAKE THIS ALBATROSS OFF MY HANDS”.

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Since I assume you have noticed these signs, have you framed them in your mind in an organized way?  Have you inventoried them?  Of course those in the commercial real estate business have but has the Simsbury Economic Development Commission (EDC) inventoried them?  What are they doing to recognize this problem and to bring more business to town that is truly accretive and novel – not something that will merely swap a dollar of revenue from an existing business?  As I read through the EDC meeting minutes for the past 14 months or so, I see far too much whining and hand wringing about how hard Simsbury is to develop in and how challenged they seem to feel they are as a commission.  I see lots of talk focused on the few new developments in town and how they want to facilitate those building processes.  But I see almost ZERO talk on what they are doing to bring new businesses to town to utilize the existing vacant space we have – space that when occupied also generates tax revenue from the business taxes paid to the town for the contents of the business.  But also when that space is occupied and successful, precious local jobs are created, collateral spending occurs from those jobs, commercial real estate values tend to increase which raises the Grand List and generates revenue for the Town.  Our EDC should try to focus more on better ways to bring novel businesses to town (not just retail but quality job creating businesses) rather than just how to facilitate developers’ interests to build new structures.  Economic development isn’t just about shovels in the ground but also about people at desks, machines making stuff and orders coming in over the internet.

Perhaps the YouTube video I filmed recently will help visualize the vacancy problem in our area.  Please take a few minutes, and save some gas money, to watch my drive up/down Routes 10 and 44 in Simsbury, Avon and Canton.  My drive will look like yours except my focus was clearly on the FOR RENT signs – the signs are everywhere.  And since I filmed the video, I see even more signs popping up.  The situation reminds me of that 1970 song called “Signs” by the Five Man Electrical Band which sang “Signs Signs Everywhere a Sign, Blocking Out the Scenery …”  Well, you see my point -  Please Click Here to watch my video.

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