Gentle Strength…On the Brink

Gentle Strength, a pioneering cooperative founded 36 years ago in Tempe, is on the ropes. 

I am  fond of saying that independent businesses are often their own worst enemies, and it is my personal opinion that Gentle Strength missed a tremendous opportunity to re-brand itself as Downtown Tempe’s “Grocery Store” inasmuch as the lack of such a store in the Downtown was grist for tons of political posturing during the past decade. The sad irony is that a much(overly)-vaunted Whole Foods Market will move into the building rising where Gentle Strength made its home for so long. If they had only broadened their offerings a bit and marketed themselves to the neighborhood as a full-service supermarket. Then again, ask me if I ever botched a business opportunity…

In any case, this weekend Gentle Strength is holding a big blowout sale (see the article below). Enough traffic could give them the cash flow they need to bail them out. So go do your shopping at an institution this weekend and make a strike for a local cause.

Best regards,

Michael Monti

“Valley organic pioneer fights to stay open

Betty Beard
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 23, 2007 08:00 PM

Gentle Strength Cooperative, a 36-year Valley institution and organic foods pioneer, is having severe financial problems, and it may have to close if it doesn’t get help. […snip…]”

When I was in third grade at Curry School, there was a great teacher named Larry Hunter.

Among Larry’s many contributions to my adult world view was his characterization to the Valley National Bank branch at Rural and Apache as “The Pineapple Bank.” This was owing to the many golden facets of the bank’s geodesic dome.

The branch was recently demolished, with the exception of the dome, which ASU assures us will be stored until it can be incorporated into some new project.

Here is a link to a nice summary of the VNB dome’s history by Jay Mark.

A place to follow Tempe’s Urbanl Upward Trends:

http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=26925&st=60

Arizona Chain Reaction 

WORKSHOP MARCH 6

TUESDAY MARCH 6 . . .
FREE MEMBER WORKSHOP. It will be held at Monti’s La Casa Vieija Restaurant located in downtown Tempe at 1 W Rio Salado Pkwy – corner of Mill & Rio Salado. Start time is 6:30 pm. Act now as it fills up fast.

This will be an interactive adventure and Mr. Dauten may use some of your experiences (no names mentioned) for his future business columns, found each Thursday in the business section of the Arizona Republic. Mr. Dauten is the author of (Great) Employees Only.
. . . OPTIONAL: IF YOU WANT ongoing help, this book is offered at $17 to those who tell us to reserve a copy for the workshop. Or you can buy it that night for $25. To register for the free workshop, please email Stacy Bertinelli (stacy@prpnetwork.com

Seen recently in a shop window in the Hollywood Palermo part of Buenos Aires (Argentina):

A new radio spot:

“Hi, This is Michael Monti, of Monti’s La Casa Vieja in Tempe
You know, in the old days they came here on horses and in wagons to cross the Salt at Haydens Ferry.
Soon, YOU’LL come on Light Rail to party on the Tempe Town Lake.
Regardless of how you get here, we’ll serve up thick, juicy steaks and authentic Arizona hospitality in Tempe’s pioneer home.
This is where it all started, and it’s still where all the action is today.
Monti’s La Casa Vieja in Downtown Tempe. (480) 967-7594 for reservations. montis.com on the web!”

“—the old sailors want wooden ships, the old soldiers want
horse cavalry.”

Robert Heinlein

…and Dowtown Tempe will never be the same. So learn to love the towers and embrace the future.

 http://eastvalleytribune.com/story/84321

And, five years later, common sense prevails at last:

“The city also will begin reviewing downtown events after a request from the Downtown Tempe Community. The city should consider a limit on the number of events that trigger street closures, said Eddie Goitia, a managing partner at Monti’s La Casa Vieja and a Downtown Tempe Community officer.

The downtown condo boom will soon bring hundreds of residents to the area, and Goitia said they deserve to know how many street closures they should expect. Events closed streets 19 or 20 times last year. “

This is a reply I wrote to AZcentral blogger Ron Pies upon reading this  http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=278&title=has_downtown_tempe_returned_to_the_1960&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1&blogtype=PluggedinSev

Dear Ron

I enjoyed you remarks about downtown Tempe reverting to the 1960s. (And thanks for plugging our place.) I thought that you might be amused to see a warning I sent around five years ago. You will be able to tell how mad I was.

Although I am dissatisfied with much that has gone on, from our point of view the situation has actually gotten somewhat better since then. When the residential towers and hotels underway are occupied it will also help by bringing full-time urban residents in who will walk to local shops and service businesses.

Best regards,

Michael L. Monti, Proprietor
Monti’s La Casa Vieja Restaurant—Birthplace (1877) of “The Most Important Person in Arizona History” Senator Carl Hayden
100 S. Mill Avenue, Tempe, AZ 85281 www.montis.com (480)967-7594

Remember…friends don’t let friends eat at chains!!!!

                                 
  —– Original Message —–
  From: Michael L. Monti (E-mail)
  To: MontiSteak@aol.com
  Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 1:35 PM
  Subject: “CALL FOR A MILL AVENUE TASK FORCE”
  Please share this with anyone you know who may live or work downtown…
 
    Monti’s Point of View on Downtown Tempe Traffic and Street Closures
  To Our Monti’s Guests:

  “CALL FOR A MILL AVENUE TASK FORCE”
  Street Closures

  I regret the inconvenience and frustration caused to you by street closures
  for Downtown events, especially given the access and parking headaches the
  closures create. We are against closing Mill Avenue except when absolutely
  necessary. In recent times there have been many more partial and total
  closures than in the past. I know it has often been hard for you to reach us
  lately, so let me say “thank you” once again for your patronage!

  Monti’s is in the food and hospitality business, not the parking business.
  We–myself and my staff and family–want our customers to enjoy ease of
  access to the restaurant. Unfortunately, the many street closures and events
  that are staged in our neighborhood have forced us to manage our parking lot
  more assertively in order to preserve any spaces at all for our guests.
  Furthermore, the last two decades of planning by Tempe City Hall have
  created a scarcity of parking near retailers that increases congestion and
  makes using our private lot a temptation for those who wish to patronize
  events or other businesses.

  Events

  The time has come to prohibit new events on Mill Avenue and to begin
  trimming the number of existing scheduled events substantially! Certainly
  the festivals staged by the Mill Avenue Merchants Association beginning back
  in the 1970s were instrumental in resurrecting what was a seedy, blighted
  area (except for Monti’s La Casa Vieja!). These festivals created interest
  in reviving the area that attracted the many developers that have
  transformed Downtown Tempe. However, that very transformation absorbed many
  open lots that once were used for parking during events. Additionally, the
  increased density of offices, condominiums and retail businesses that have
  been attracted to the Downtown area means that the number of people who are
  grossly inconvenienced by closures and congestion has grown dramatically
  since the early days. In short, we have more people who need to get in and
  out, but less parking and access than ever before. The City has made an
  enormous investment in the Tempe Town Lake and Tempe Beach Park (estimates
  we have seen range from $40 million to $200 million). All events downtown
  should be moved to this park, and event promoters should be required to pay
  the true cost of security and traffic diversion-specifically, traffic should
  be routed in a way that is least disruptive to normal residential and
  commercial uses in the neighborhood. Events that are the “pet” projects of
  elected officials should not be given special consideration. In this message
  I am not going to get involved in the question of whether the Town Lake was
  a legitimate investment-only the question of what must be done now to deal
  with the situation that has been created.

  Traffic and On-Street Parking
  Media coverage on the recent addition of on-street parking along Mill Avenue
  and the consequent restriction of Mill to one lane in each direction has
  inadvertently mixed two issues-parking and traffic lanes. The traffic
  problem can be eliminated while keeping the new on-street parking. Downtown
  Tempe needed and is better off with the on-street parking, but the City’s
  means of bringing it about were shortsighted. I hope that future debate on
  this problem will focus not on removing the on-street parking but instead
  will add back the second lanes in accordance with alternative plans that
  were developed by the Downtown Tempe Community (DTC).

  Career urban planners often do not understand the reality of commerce, and
  this has been a problem in Tempe. Retail customers want there be visible
  parking very near their destinations. No parking, no consumers. Perhaps it
  ought not to be that way, but to stay in business I must accommodate what
  people actually do-I can’t put what they “should” do in the bank. And
  neither can Tempe collect sales tax upon the good intentions of those who
  believe that consumers ought to be willing to park blocks away from their
  final destinations.

  To that end, a few observations are in order:

  First, this congestion is the final result of twenty years of poor choices
  and conflicting priorities. All of the eggs were put in one basket, and now
  City Hall has decided it was the wrong basket. While the downtown was being
  groomed as a pure example of the new urbanism, a proposal to create a bypass
  route using Ash Ave (in a similar configuration to Goldwater/Drinkwater in
  Scottsdale) was discarded. Subsequently the abandonment of the bypass option
  was made irreversible by the decision to place the new Tempe bridge on Mill
  Avenue.

  The Rio Salado Parkway once served as a handy East-West bypass for the
  Downtown. It was realigned along old First Street for aesthetic purposes
  when they face lifted when Tempe Beach Park was modified for the Town
  Lake-and this made its intersection  with Mill Avenue an indispensable
  artery for traffic. Yet now having made this investment of millions  of
  dollars in infrastructure engineered to channel hundreds of thousands of
  vehicles through downtown Tempe, our leaders are shocked-shocked!-that
  people are angry about the bottleneck and will instinctively use peripheral
  neighborhoods such as Maple-Ash to skirt the problem.

  As a final note, I would like to add that as a member of the DTC I supported
  taking the on-street parking plan to City Hall as part of a package proposal
  which included signage reform vitally needed to remind consumers that this
  is a retail shopping zone, as well as a promise that the DTC would pressure
  the City to mitigate street closures. Closing Mill Avenue is an addiction
  for our elected officials because it allows them to gather large numbers of
  voters in one convenient location for gladhanding. However, being
  politicians and not business people they completely fail to grasp that
  frequent closures of Mill serve as aversion therapy to consumers. Would the
  owners of large malls such as Fashion Square or Arizona Mills ever stand for
  complete closure of the major streets where they are located nineteen times
  a year? Would they allow it even once a year?  So, why is City Hall
  surprised that sales tax revenues downtown diminished with frequent closures
  of an area that their own planning and design decisions made into the only
  substantial thoroughfare through the area?
  >

  We have voiced our desire to limit unnecessary street closures many times to
  the City government-but we are just one voice. If you are dissatisfied, we
  need your help. Please write a letter to Rod Keeling, Executive Director of
  the Downtown Tempe Community, expressing your support for a City policy to
  increase restrictions on events requiring street closures. Please also
  express your desire for consistent, predictable vehicular access to Downtown
  Tempe, without haphazard closures and detours. Your voice as a citizen and
  consumer will lend great strength to our efforts to make Monti’s more
  accessible in the future. We call on all Downtown Tempe customers to demand
  that a task force, made up of business people, city staff, neighbors, and
  one or two Councilmen, be assembled to define and solve the problems we have
  presented.  It would also be a good idea to copy Mayor Neil Giuliano. Here
  is the contact information you will need:

  Rod Keeling                     Mayor Neil Giuliano
  Executive Director                  City of Tempe
  Downtown Tempe Community, Inc.          PO Box 5002
  660 S. Mill Ave., Suite 150, Tempe, AZ 85281    Tempe AZ 85280
  rod@downtowntempe.com               Neil_Giuliano@tempe.gov

  Additionally, we suggest that you contact the Mill Avenue Merchants’
  Association
  520 S Mill Avenue, Suite 201
  Tempe, AZ 85281
  Telephone: 480-967-4877
  www.millavenue.org
  Thank you for your support and patronage,
  Sincerely,>