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birding economics: bookstores, Bonner Bridge?



Hi Carolinabirders,

The below message has been shooting all over the Triangle and beyond
today. The short version is, an economic study found that an independent,
locally owned bookstore generates three times as much economic activity
per dollar for a community than a big corporate chain; even given the
assumption that a franchise of a big chain would attract new business,
overall it winds up *costing* the community money.

How does this relate to birding? Every time a new birding book comes out -
Sibley, Kauffman, Peterson, NGS, etc. - folks post to Carolinabirds about
the great deals they see on Amazon.com, at Costco, and other such places.
Then we go to festivals like Wings Over Water and Swan Days, and try to
convince local government officials and businesses that conservation can
be good for their economies by attracting birders and other ecotourists to
town. Well, if we shop at local places, each dollar we spend gives them
three times as much reason to support conservation than if we go to
chains.

Something to think about. The e-mail is below. A little more is on-line at
http://www.civiceconomics.com/Lamar_Retail_Analysis_Executive_Summary.pdf

Which gets me thinking about Bonner Bridge and the whole question of
future access to Pea Island. Assume that they do the right thing for the
birds and build the bridge that bypasses Pea Island. Will there even be a
Wings Over Water festival if Pea Island is not readily accessible? How
much business will be lost to Nags Head or Kitty Hawk, especially in the
non-beach seasons, which also happen to be the best birding seasons? Will
Brian Patteson have even more trouble filling his pelagic trips if his
customers don't have Pea Island to fall back on when the boats get
weathered out? How many customers would the Duke of Dare, Dare Haven, or
Cape Pines motels lose?

The real question is, do all of these potential losses add up to enough
money to justify some sort of other access to Pea Island if and when the
Bonner Bridge is no longer safe? A ferry of some sort, maybe, as runs to
Cape Lookout National Seashore? Or at least boats by charter, as currently
exist for Portsmouth Island?

Just wondering...

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
KEEP YOUR DOLLARS IN DURHAM?
This story starts in Austin, Texas, where in early 2000 plans surfaced for
a downtown retail redevelopment project, to be funded in part with city
incentive funds. Included in the development was going to be a big new
Borders Bookstore. All of this was slated for the block at Sixth and Lamar
- right across the street from BookPeople, one of Texas' biggest and best
independent bookstores.

BookPeople's co-owner, Steve Bercu, obviously wasn't too thrilled about
all of this. But instead of just yelling and screaming, he responded by
hitting the books--the economics books, that is. Bercu hired an economics
consulting firm to evaluate the economic impact of local merchants versus
national chains. Not surprisingly, the study showed that local retailers
put more money back into the local economy. What was surprising was how
big the difference was.

For every $100 spent at BookPeople, the study showed that $45 stayed in
the local community. For $100 spent at Borders, only $13 stayed in Austin,
and the rest "got on a plane at midnight and left," as Bercu put it. SO
THE INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE GENERATED THREE TIMES MORE LOCAL ECONOMIC
ACTIVITY THAN THE CHAIN BOOKSTORE. (Capitals added for emphasis).

Feeding this information into the proposed new development, the consulting
firm found that, even with a wildly optimistic scenario that 50% of
Borders' business was "new" business (not business diverted from existing
local merchants), adding a Borders was actually going to REDUCE local
economic activity by millions of dollars a year.

Bercu took his study to the Austin City Council, where Borders had little
to say in response. The city council voted to withdraw their incentives
for the Borders project, and Borders withdrew from the development.

Of course if you buy your books from some place like amazon.com, the
amount of your money that stays local is extremely close to a number that
starts with zero, ends with zero, and has nothing but zeros in between.

So, if you like where you live, consider keeping your money in the
neighborhood - where it just might help your quality of life the most.

---------------------------------------------