To our city leadership: We plead with you to support these spaces and the humans behind them.
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After reading Renee King’s Feb. 10 column “Small business struggles: Are we next?” and reflecting on other companies' closures, I have found myself with many feelings to process: sadness they are struggling, frustration the economy does not support their longevity, and curiosity around how I can take a more active role in their sustainability.
I felt compelled to put my feelings into words; feelings that might resonate with my neighbors. This is my personal love letter to small local businesses:
We see you. We hear your pleas for our business. We love the character and dimensions you bring to our neighborhoods. We admire your creativity and grit and dedication. We adore your products and services!
We are trying desperately to support you. We feel like imposters each time we click the “Checkout” button online, knowing how much you are suffering. But our resources are thin as well; both time and money.
We agree our region needs you. Our hearts break when we hear about another closing, changing the landscape of our beloved home. We ask one another, "What could we have done?"
By no means is it as personal to us as it is to you, the founders, proprietors, and employees, but we grieve alongside you and blame ourselves acutely. We conspire over solutions bigger than us; system-wide changes to result in better outcomes.
Please know we love you. Know you have shaped our celebrations and memories. Know you have trademarked our homes and hearts. Know we still admire you when you close your doors, maybe more so because we recognize the depths of that decision. It doesn’t diminish your success.
Opening a small business takes invention and energy; closing takes introspection and courage. It’s what happens in between that we need to reexamine.
To our city leadership: We plead with you to support these spaces and the humans behind them. We are terrified Worcester will turn into a wasteland of big brands. We beg you to show up with more proactivity, regardless of any membership or political status, networking or English-language skills, or your personal preferences.
This problem doesn’t have a grassroots solution. If it did, we would save them all. It’s going to take collective commitment and deep investment from local government and power hitters in the region. It will take a conscious choice that we don’t want our city to lose its fingerprint of entrepreneurs and artists, visionaries and makers.
Corporate greed cannot define the next era of Worcester. We need to come together with intention and creativity. We must honestly ask, “Do we care about the people and places who are Worcester, who made this city a destination, or were they just a steppingstone in our growth?”
Julie Bowditch is executive director of the nonprofit CASA Project Worcester County.
