What is wrong with this town?

[Scott]

Why can't Wethersfield attract new businesses?
In Newington they are turning mountains of rock into building lots while our shopping plazas have vacancies.
What is the problem? Why can't I buy a book, clothes, or a TV without leaving town?
We have plenty of parking, easy access, lots of traffic and available real estate, so why don't they come?

[oldetowne]

Market demographics rule out much of the north ends of both the Silas Deane and Berlin Tpke as being attractive to many retailers. Goff Brook and the Wethersfield Shopping Center are professionally run but suffer from the whims of national retail chains that want to have their way with the lease and the facilities and follow the "flavor of the month" (for example, all of the drug stores now NEED to be stand alone buildings). Beyond that, it's a random array of small buildings that are 20-40 years old and a few strip centers that have problems of their own from the management and maintenance viewpoints which are of no interest to up scale or national chains and there isn't sufficient synergistic traffic to ensure that a local enterpreneur can succeed.

The trend was toward the maxi-mall megastores and now it's essentially the same but with a higher premium on curb appeal. A consolidated shopping area which has 20+ stores accessible from a single parking spot is where most national chains want to be now - not as the third store to the left of Yum Yum donuts or behind Gus's Barber Shop.

There are plenty of Class A, B and C office vacancies available but very few of them are large enough to attract a business of any size.

These factors play as big a role as the design review issues that are being tossed around at P&Z and the constant revolving door of ad hoc committees to study the problem. There are half a dozen places in town that are large enough to either be developed or redeveloped in a meaningful way and this economy isn't the best one for doing that here and now.