Thompson: Purge of businesses is opportunity to take action
'The city should be encouraging creative partnerships'
Editor, the Asbury Park Sun:
It was only a few weeks ago when 22 of us, all candidates for City Council, were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder on stages across the city talking about how we each would improve Asbury Park. Of the many interesting and varied approaches to our city’s issues, consensus seemed to be drawn clearly on small business — Asbury needs to attract and promote small business. Red tape and arcane laws that are not benefitting small businesses, nor our community, should be revised.
Last week when a cutting edge advertising agency Marshall Jackson Partners, along with Image Tech, were purged from their space in a collaborative with a Cookman Avenue Art Gallery, no better example could have been made of city rules and processes that need to be changed. The retail mandate on Cookman Avenue has been a thorn in the side of several businesses on Cookman Avenue, now it has jeopardized three businesses in one shot.
In a struggling economy the city should be encouraging creative partnerships among businesses that allow them to share costs and pool resources to maximize their success. In this particular partnership it was the presence of the three businesses that allowed the gallery to be open to the public seven days a week. If the city has an issue with the arrangement, they should be proactive in expressing what is needed to keep the collaborative functioning, not treating the businesses like an illegal enterprise which has just been discovered and purging them.
This situation creates the perfect opportunity for those campaign promises of helping small businesses to be put into action. The time is now to get Mashall Jackson Partners and Image Tech back into their Cookman Avenue locale and to revise this long standing rule which has been an obstruction to small businesses.
— Randy Thompson, Asbury Park
[This letter represents the opinion of its writer and is not representative of any opinion of the Asbury Park Sun staff. All readers are welcome to submit Letters to the Editor to news@asburyparksun.com for our consideration. For guidelines on letter-writing and submission, click here. Do not send attachments.]
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