Each day this week I am serving up one item, with non-politically correct candor, that Downtown Austin needs to become a model of re-urbanization, as I see it.
Politicians love to talk, form task forces, and spend time doing everything except for making decisions as they are needed. So, this is an appeal to Downtown Austin stakeholders that know how to get things done: the residents, developers, retailers, and land owners.
I want a hardware store on Congress Ave.
Breed & Co is a hugely successful hardware store operating near UT. A pedestrian neighborhood needs a proper hardware store. Sometimes you just need some screws, spackle, or paint. Currently, I need to get in my car and drive to Home Depot. A better solution is to provide the existing 3,954 households with a local hardware store.
There’s a theme here – ironically, the old businesses that have hung on in the two surviving patches of good urban living in Austin are apparently more reluctant than most to open up a new location where it would seem an obvious success. (Fresh Plus being the other obvious example with Breed).
National chains may be more capable of taking this kind of risk, but you’d think the Fresh Plus’ and Breeds’ would have an advantage in terms of knowing how to get stuff delivered to locations that don’t have giant parking lots and loading docks…
I just wish there was a way to easily get from the Woodward Home Depot to the Walmart on 71. The Walmart is a terminus for a lot of buses. The Home Depot not so much. And yet they’re only a hundred or so yards apart.
There isn’t a single day that goes by that I don’t wish there were a hardware store closer to me on South Congress. I’m with you—I love window shopping and all, but I need some practical businesses too!