river

The sidewalks were like the canals of Venice outside the bookshop after the cloudburst Monday. It's strange to watch how this happens...about the time the heavy rain starts to let up and the storm is abating, the water jumps the curb from Park Avenue and comes around the corner on Main Street. I guess the buildup of water coming down the slope of Park Ave takes about the time of an average cloudburst to reach the Square.

other issues

Complaining about parking in my opinion is an excuse used for not shopping downtown by people who feel vaguely guilty about not supporting local businesses. It's an issue high up on the agenda of merchants, but not really very significant to the customers compared to other issues, like what kinds of stores are downtown, what their hours are, and what there is to do otherwise.

Mansfield needs a couple more downtown restaurants to make it a mealtime destination.
We need more browsing shops (like more bookstores, or an army surplus store, or antique shops). And we need to capitalize on the Carrousel, Central Park, Rennaiscance Theater, North Main Street shops, in advertising outside our local area! Local people do not spend money downtown to any significant degree from my experience. At least in my bookshop this is true. It's out of town visitors who bring armfulls of books to the counter and gush about what a great store it is. And they are also just as likely to gush about how cheap the parking is! Local people tell me they just can't spend much time in a shop like mine or they would buy too much, or they have to come back when they have more time, and walk out the door empty handed.

I think this is true everywhere. If you're in you're own town, you don't have the urge to buy on impulse because you can come back any day you feel like and buy what you just saw in the shop. Or you can go look for the item on eBay and if you don't find it at a better price, come back later for it. The other factor is the monkey see monkey do effect. If the shop is crowded and people bringing things to the counter to purchase, it's more likely other people in the shop will spend some money also. Extend this theory to downtown, outoftowners making purchases would stimulate the MSMD effect with local people who happen downtown.

So the bottom line is that local advertising is wasted unless it's targetted to your specialized customer base. Cooperative advertising by groups of merchants or promotions by the city have to be directed to bringing in the tourists, not wasted on local shoppers.

parking

Some plans were finalized this morning for downtown parking. Primarily the meters in the core business district will be reset uniformly to two-hours with 25 cents per hour. This is hoped to eliminate the confusion of where to park and give ample time for visiting a restaurant. Other things discussed at the meeting this morning between merchants and the city included putting stickers on the meters to indicate when you need to feed them (like they had on them in the old days).
Regarding people who habitually camp at meters, we learned that the city can give them a red warning tag when they are found over the two hour limit, which gives the violator the opportunity to move the vehicle before the meter person makes the next round. It was agreed that using these might be better to give fair warning rather than slapping the $25 ticket on them.

mansfield data

Check out www.dataplace.org to map an incredible amount of statistical data on Mansfield or any other US municipal area. Here's an example: Poverty level by census tract in percentage in 2000.
I've been working with data on subprime lending. Here's another example...: Percent of Conventional Home Purchase Mortgage Loans by Subprime Lenders in 2004
I made my own map of current foreclosed properties that are listed, and was surprised that most are on the south side of the city, not in the lower income tracts. Then, looking at another map from dataplace makes the reason clear. The rate of home ownership is so low in the high poverty tracts, so the number of mortgage loans is very low in those areas as well.

sogbety diomande's west african celebration

The 2nd Annual West African Celebration is coming up August 24-26 at Camp Avery Hand, 3766 Orweiler Rd. Visit the website for the celebration at www.freewebs.com/sogbetydiomande
for information about all of the weekend activities and tickets. The highlight of the weekend will be the Saturday night performance at 8 p.m. featuring West African dancing and drumming. Tickets for that event are $25. You can also purchase a weekend ticket for $165 adults or $45 Children 6-12, that includes food, camping, all classes, all performances, and the lecture. Contact Highlands of Ohio for tickets at 419-522-5058 or email highlands@neo.rr.com

narrated video of new listing

The narrated video of 4157 Hastings Newville Rd is up now at http://41.alanwigton.com
Another virtual tour (no narration but higher resolution) is at http://tours.justsnooping.com/2304153

new listing

Just listed: my favorite house in the county. It was built by artist/builder Ken Arthur in 1978, on 3.22 acres about 3 miles this side of Malabar Farm on Hastings-Newville Road. Ken sold it in 2001, and it's offered by the current owners at $235,000. The house is timber framed with reclaimed, hand-hewn posts and beams. High R-value insulated. Exterior is board and batten cedar. A large barn with loft provides studio/workshop space. Ken's art is based on "found" objects and this house reflects that...an eco-friendly house ... a combination of energy-conserving design, and reclaimed energy in its construction.
When Ken built his latest house and moved, he of course took most of his collections that filled the house, outbuildings, and landscape including the boulder collection that once lined the driveway. But vestiges of the collection remain, in structural elements and adornments of found objects and recycled building parts from the past...like the clay chimney pots, Victorian gingerbread brackets, implement parts hanging in trees, and stones of all kinds. You'll see what I mean when you take the video tour...it's not going to be up until tomorrow at the earliest, but I'll post a link when it's ready.

real age

Here's one of several interesting calculators at poodwaddle.com . A friend sent me a link to the "world clock" but it was too wide to fit the blog, so you get the real age calculator instead.


Poodwaddle.com

upcoming events at appleseed

Saturday, July 28, is the third annual Praise in the Hills concert at the outdoor amphitheater south of Mifflin. If the Gold City Quartet, and Gospel Harmony Boys aren't your cup of tea, maybe you'd enjoy the Bluegrass Festival (second year for this event) on Saturday, Aug. 11. Both events are in the evening at 7 p.m. with gates opening at 4:30.

disciplinary architecture

I've been trying to convince the city administration to install a short iron railing on top of the streetscape planters to discourage sitting, an idea that has been brought up in the past and rejected because of cost. In researching other, cheaper ways to discourage sitters I've discovered that there's a name for this type of architecture; defensive architecture if you're seeing it in a positive light ,or disciplinary architecture if your point of view is somewhat more negative about the concept. The city of Tokyo has taken this to the extreme of creating park benches that are unsittable for any extended length of time, and strategically designed "art" that takes over public spaces previously occupied by homeless.
I'm not about to apologize for advocating some reasonable measures in the case of these planters. They were installed as part of a failed effort in the 1980s to try to make the downtown look like the shopping malls that had drawn business to the suburbs. Their failure was compounded by the lost on-street parking spaces and the damage created to the downtown pedestrian-friendliness by the large parking lot separating the square from the North Main area and the even more ill-concieved parking garage (now gone). The "streetscape" was paid for by assessments on property owners. It failed miserably while preservation of old buildings north of Fourth Street has succeeded, beyond the streetscape's boundaries, yet the city administration resists any removal or modification. Businesses within the Central Park Historic District manage to cope "in spite of" the streetscape and the lost "look and feel" of a traditional downtown (which shopping areas like Easton Center in Columbus try to emulate). Here on the west side of the Square, the negative impact of the streetscape is most intense with lost parking, lost loading and unloading access, and lost traditional cityscape.
The smoker/idlers can remain standing as far as I'm concerned or walk across the street to the park where there are real benches and grass to sit on. If the planters can't be removed, at least they shouldn't serve a function that drives business away.

how much to offer

I've posted a page (link here) analyzing some sold statistics of bank-owned properties to help buyers understand what kind of offers are being accepted in the $50,000 + price range (Mansfield is in one of the lowest priced real estate markets in the country FYI to anyone reading this from elsewhere. Median price of homes selling here today is around $94,ooo, down from about $100,000 a year ago).
In lower price ranges the percentage spread between sold price and listed price broadens considerably, but in the 50,000+ range the average sold price is hitting about 95% or more of asking price, with very very few exceptions. Adding to the rarity of low sold-to-listed ratios is the fact that some of the lowest ratio transactions are a result of factors that aren't revealed in the sold statistics, like major defects discovered during inspections, rather than the result of low-ball negotiation strategies.

planter sitters, another update

Officer Shay clears the planter sitters on his foot patrols for a few hours in the middle of the day. The habitual idlers scatter for a while and come back for the rest of the afternoon and evening. He ought to at least arrest the guy in the foreground for the pants he's wearing!

septic rules repealed

The governor signed the budget bill without striking the provision to repeal the septic system rules that went into effect Jan. 1. The repeal will last two years while they are reformulated, and in the meantime we will revert to the way things were done in the past. I haven't been entirely in favor of this repeal even though I'm a Realtor and the OAR was backing it. I haven't heard of any local horror stories under the new rules, but I guess some counties took a stricter approach. This divergence from county to county was one of the things the new rules were supposed to alleviate, so if they hadn't solved that problem I suppose it is best to start over.

streetscape

More complaining about streetscape and planters:

• The block and a half between 2nd Street and N. Park Street on Main has no parking, where originally there was parking on both sides of the street. This includes the Richland Bank and Mechanic's blocks.
  
• The City has been enforcing a ban on delivery vehicles using the streetscape for loading and unloading. In particular the Service Safety director has accused delivery vehicles of causing damage by creating potholes in the brick which the city has to repair.
  
• There is no turnoff area or loading zone to service the businesses on these blocks, and recent discussions about parking and such are just a repeat of discussions I've heard for the last four years. The city feels (per Chief Messer's statement at the last parking meeting) that because the merchants unanimously favored the streetscape in 1981, they should have to live with it (26 years later). Despite the fact that pedestrian malls and streetscapes were dismal failures in cities all over the country, and that many cities have removed them and restored the mix of sidewalks, curbs, parking spaces and streets.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting to see that a city vehicle loaded with water for the planters was parked on the streetscape, and thought I'd post a picture here for reference since our business's delivery and maintenance vehicles are being accused of harming the brick paving. Of course it makes sense to use the brick area instead of blocking a lane of traffic. That's why it's happening even with city vehicles.

fountain

The Vasbinder Fountain renovation is about completed. The new color reflects back to the color it was painted in the 1950s. I noticed the urns around the base are stamped "Kramer Fdry. Dayton Oh" and checked on line about that company. It was started in 1895 and the line of urns is still produced by Talledega Foundry in Alabama. The date would indicate that the urns were a later acquisition. Perhaps the urns were bought when the fountain was brought back from Malabar Farm and reinstalled in Central Park.
Shortly after Mansfield got its water works the idea emerged of having a fountain in Central Park. Funds were raised in the community that paid for constructing the reservoir. David and Jane Vasbinder, brother and sister, paid for the fountain itself. The total cost was $2500. The fountain was originally dedicated on Monday, July 4, 1881. Festivities were dampened by news of the assassination of president Garfield the previous Saturday.