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| May 05, 2024 |
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General News: Mixed Picture on Main Street for Businesses
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| Bob DeWit gives a tour of Main Street |
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| Some storefronts are still empty |
September 13, 2007
As residents and visitors get ready to descend on Cornwall’s Main Street this Saturday for the annual Fall Festival, they will notice a number of storefronts are featuring new businesses that have opened in just the past few months.
Two of the businesses, the new lunch café where Bubba’s used to be and the Cornwall Yarn Shop, which moved this week from its previous home on Torrey Lane to Main Street, will be greeting visitors for the first time this Saturday.
From Brid’s Closet, featuring metaphysical products and herbs, to CC’s Closet, with specialty children’s clothing, a visitor could feel that the corner has been turned in the effort to revitalization the downtown area.
Bob DeWit, the president of the Greater Cornwall Chamber of Commerce, sees Main Street’s future a little differently. He agrees that there has been a bit of revitalization on Main Street but he thinks it is largely turnover.
Businesses come and go, “ he says. “If they were making money they would still be here.”
DeWit thinks the biggest challenge facing business owners comes from rising property taxes in Cornwall. When building owners get a hefty increase in their taxes, like he did two years ago when his tax assessment went up more than 50%, they can either pass it on to their tenants or lose money themselves, DeWit says.
“The taxes are killing us,” DeWit says. “The tax base is driving people out.”
DeWit says that property owners have little incentive to improve their building facades if they think it will result in the tax assessor raising their assessments.
Cornwall’s tax assessor Ron Fiorentino, the man many blame for steep assessments and accompanying higher taxes, was reappointed to another term last Monday night by the town board. One of those who voted for him is Randy Clark, a town board member and former chamber president whose business is right next door to DeWit on Main Street.
Councilman Clark agrees that it is never a good thing for a property owner when taxes go up, but says it is part of reality. He says he has confidence in Fiorentino’s plan to restore order to the disarray left by the prior assessor.
Clark thinks that the town should be doing more to help the businesses on Main Street, pointing to plans stretching back to the early 1990s that never were carried out.
“The town hasn’t pushed the issue,” Clark noted, adding that code enforcement should be tougher and an architectural review should be applied to guide new and renovated building. He also says a grant writer could help the town apply for county and federal money.
As president of the Chamber of Commerce for the past four years, DeWit is not about to give up on efforts to revitalize downtown. The chamber has asked the town, who then asked the county, for professional planning assistance.
DeWit says the professional guidance could be key to a bright future on Main Street. “Look at what they did in Beacon,” he says. “They changed zoning and moved residential apartments from the ground floor of buildings and they got money for owners to re-do their facades.”
Meanwhile, the chamber will be re-starting its Buy Local advertising campaign that features local businesses as well as the Shop Hop, a high-value raffle for people who shop at participating local stores.
They have also initiated talks with Central Hudson to see if the power company will clean up some of its poles along Main Street.
Membership is growing in the chamber, DeWit says, and on Saturday local residents will have a chance to come out and meet many of the local business owners who are investing on Main Street.
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