The Morgan Hill Times recently reported on the advice from a consultant where he suggested that the downtown businesses would benefit from longer hours since many homes are two income and folks cannot shop during normal work day hours.
Is it must me or should the immediate follow up to this be "Duh!"?
I sure hope the city did not pay some huge fee for this sage advice.
There is no doubt that the Morgan Hill downtown needs some help. Many folks have offered ideas on how this could be achieved. While the hours the stores are open plays a part - the problems of downtown go far deeper than that.
First, there are no big magnet businesses downtown. No destinations. Downtown needs to be someplace that offers a few anchor stores that then allow visitors to take in the other stores. This is one reason why the big ugly retail area in Gilroy works. People head down there for the Barnes and Noble and end up doing things at the other nearby stores.
But Morgan Hill does not need to achieve this in the same way Gilroy did... by allowing business to drop generic retail boxes across the landscape and call it shopping.
What the city needs to do is court some key anchor type retailers and integrate them into the downtown in a way that lets the area keep its more "old town" feel while still allowing the business to establish itself in the way it wants.
Of course, that would actually require work. Why do that when you can just pay a consultant to tell the downtown businesses to just stay open longer.
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