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Why Independent Businesses Must Do More Than Donate

Worked to Keep Austin Neighborhood & Small Independent Business Friendly

Next month, it will be four years since I became the Business Liaison Chair for Responsible Growth for Northcross (RG4N).

I chose to get involved because I am a business owner, a small business activist and I live and work in the area.

Last night was the VIP opening of the more neighborhood-sized WalMart on Anderson Lane in Austin, Texas. The RG4N board was invited and several of us went including the original President, Paige Hill.

Our efforts to stop the supercenter were not about size as much as about the impact of that size. That impact includes traffic, litter, security, safety issues for those with disabilities, crime, air and water quality. It was also about the impact on locally owned stores that do not fare well with a big box, especially a WalMart, nearby. [Read more...]

Think Before You Buy

A message to my neighbors in Central Austin and to any community that has had to live with the fallout from having a big box store push its way in.

Northcross Independent Investment Zone

The first spade of dirt has been turned. The bulldozers are busy. The piles of broken asphalt and dry earth are mounting up.

When I try to make my normal walk from my office at the Chase Tower around the Northcross triangle, I can’t. There is a metal fence with a plain green cloth stretched from the middle of the parking lot all the way to Anderson. I can’t see what is happening except through holes where the cloth doesn’t fit quite tightly enough to exclude me. [Read more...]