The loss of Dorothy McNett’s Place dealt a serious blow to the
downtown and the morale of the merchants trying to make a go of it
in Hollister. It should be a wake-up call for our local leaders to
focus their energies on stimulating our downtown and our business
sector as a whole.
The loss of Dorothy McNett’s Place dealt a serious blow to the downtown and the morale of the merchants trying to make a go of it in Hollister. It should be a wake-up call for our local leaders to focus their energies on stimulating our downtown and our business sector as a whole.
McNett, Hollister’s own Martha Stewart, had a lot of success, growing a business that started with cooking classes in her home into a booming Internet trade with a large storefront on San Benito Street. But then the economy started to stumble. When Sept. 11 hit, the economy went in the tank and McNett’s business – which provided upscale cookware, gourmet foods and fine wine – dried up as people pinched their pennies and focused on buying the essentials. McNett announced last Friday that she is shutting her doors for good.
While McNett’s boom-and-bust story is sad for her as an individual, it’s also a warning alarm about the fragile state of our downtown. Her store drew customers to San Benito Street. Other merchants are worried that the closure of McNett’s store will create a ripple effect that could harm smaller businesses – that the customers drawn to McNett’s store will no longer come downtown and stroll through their shops.
If our downtown is to succeed – and we truly believe local leaders want it to, because a healthy downtown is more than a tax-producing business district, it is the heart of a community – we need sound economic planning to draw businesses to the area.
Hollister and San Benito County are caught up in a heated debate over growth, but, while the merits of building more homes can be debated ad nauseum, there is no doubt that this town and county need economic development. Without a healthy business sector, Hollister will be consigned to being a bedroom community for San Jose. And if a large portion of our population leaves town every day to earn a decent wage, local retail shops like Dorothy McNett’s Place, will continue to struggle and our downtown will continue to fall short of it’s full potential.
We’ve called on the San Benito County Board of Supervisors and the Economic Development Corporation to create an economic task force with a tight focus to generate concrete proposals to boost the local economy in the short and long term. This effort should go beyond the boundaries that separate the county and the city. It would be ideal if members of the Hollister City Council and the San Benito County Chamber of Commerce joined such a task force and contributed their knowledge and skills to boosting economic development.
United we have a chance to turn our county into a prosperous, self-sustaining region. But if we ignore the warning signs, Dorothy McNett’s Place won’t be the last to close its doors in downtown Hollister.
