{"id":2805,"date":"2012-05-06T21:57:31","date_gmt":"2012-05-07T01:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/?p=2805"},"modified":"2012-05-07T12:59:25","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T16:59:25","slug":"does-whole-foods-effect-spur-business-investment-and-neighborhood-revitalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2012\/05\/06\/does-whole-foods-effect-spur-business-investment-and-neighborhood-revitalization\/","title":{"rendered":"Does &#8220;Whole Foods Effect&#8221; spur business investment and neighborhood revitalization?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: left; margin: 10px 10px 10px 0;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5595881567027133\";\r\n\/* Medium Rectangle *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"8584504377\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>In the second half of <a href=\"http:\/\/savannahnow.com\/exchange\/2012-05-06\/vacant-block-savannahs-hall-street-has-tremendous-potential\" target=\"_blank\">my City Talk column today<\/a>, I wrote about the symbolic importance of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2012\/05\/02\/its-official-whole-foods-coming-to-savannah\/\" target=\"_blank\">Savannah getting a Whole Foods<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Coincidentally, a Facebook friend yesterday sent me a great piece from Salon: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2012\/05\/05\/whole_foods_is_coming_time_to_buy\/\" target=\"_blank\">Whole Foods is coming? Time to buy<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The headline is overstated; the piece is pretty clear that individual neighborhood amenities add value to real estate, but it doesn&#8217;t happen overnight.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What neighborhood?&#8221; some might ask concerning the Whole Foods in Savannah. <\/p>\n<p>Well, our Whole Foods at the old Backus Cadillac at the corner of Victory Drive and the Truman Parkway will certainly be accessible within 20 minutes to a large percentage of the metro area, but it&#8217;s also going to be incredibly convenient to the Parkside neighborhood, to various neighborhoods off Bee Road, to neighborhoods north of Victory Drive from the Truman west, to the Waters Avenue corridor that needs revitalization, and even to the whole 52nd Street\/Delesseps corridor.<\/p>\n<p>Even though we in Savannah think of the areas I&#8217;ve listed as starkly different neighborhoods, they&#8217;re all within a few minutes of each other (by bike or by car) on the east side of town.<\/p>\n<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"3\" style=\"float: none; margin:0px 0 0px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5595881567027133\";\r\n\/* 468 x 60 Banner bottom *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"3159198192\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 468;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 60;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n<p>From Salon: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you ask Whole Foods why it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s breaking ground on a store in Midtown Detroit this month, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll say it wants to be part of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153an incredible community\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153make natural foods available to everyone.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>And that may be. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also true that the Austin, Texas-based retailer has made a science of putting down roots in urban locations at what often seems to be just the right moment. In Washington, D.C., near Logan Circle in 2000, Uptown New Orleans and the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh in 2002, Boston\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Latin Quarter\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Jamaica Plain in 2011 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d areas that other specialty grocers might have considered unworthy of goat cheese and ostrich eggs, but that were actually on the verge of a boom that, lo and behold, kicked into high gear as soon as Whole Foods moved in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And a direct comment on how the &#8220;Whole Foods Effect&#8221; can benefit business investment:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Before a Whole Foods goes in, if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not much private investment in that district, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no data for developers to look at,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says [Bill Reid, a principal at the Portland, Ore., land-use consultancy Johnson Reid]. A publicly traded behemoth is a data-generating machine. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You can go to their annual report and see how many customers they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re getting, how much traffic,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which lures other potential developers. And those other developers can bring Whole Foods\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 numbers to a lender to get a loan. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To a lender and a developer, those are bankable numbers,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Reid. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re as good as gold for a business.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the second half of <a href=\"http:\/\/savannahnow.com\/exchange\/2012-05-06\/vacant-block-savannahs-hall-street-has-tremendous-potential\" target=\"_blank\">my City Talk column today<\/a>, I wrote about the symbolic importance of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2012\/05\/02\/its-official-whole-foods-coming-to-savannah\/\" target=\"_blank\">Savannah getting a Whole Foods<\/a>.  Coincidentally, a Facebook friend yesterday sent me a great piece from Salon: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2012\/05\/05\/whole_foods_is_coming_time_to_buy\/\" target=\"_blank\">Whole Foods is coming? Time to buy<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2012\/05\/06\/does-whole-foods-effect-spur-business-investment-and-neighborhood-revitalization\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[9,297,232],"class_list":["post-2805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-livingsavannah","tag-home-prices","tag-salon","tag-whole-foods"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gN9R-Jf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}