Speaking of Starbucks, they're in trouble

From the blog Calculated Risk:

Press Release: Starbucks Increases Number of U.S. Company-Operated Store Closures as Part of Transformation Strategy

Starbucks has announced ... a decision to close approximately 600 underperforming company-operated stores in the U.S. market.
...
Starbucks now expects to open fewer than 200 new U.S. company-operated stores in fiscal 2009.
In April Starbucks had announced plans to expand by about 400 net stores per year through 2011. This is a substantial cut from that plan.

This is more bad news for strip mall owners ...

Bad news for Downtown too?

I've been meaning to write Part 2 pf my post on mass transit and Downtown, but with all of the truly terrible economic news coming out lately, I think I'm going to take a look at the current economic climate and how it may impact Downtown development. It's a good bet that in the short term we're going to take a hard hit, but in the long term expensive oil and the weak dollar may end up helping Downtown. More on this whenever I can find the time to sit down and write a long post...

Update: 600 closed stores = 12,000 lost jobs. Yikes.

Exurbs in trouble

From the blog Calculated Risk:

Last week I mentioned that 15% of the homes in Temecula, CA were REO or in foreclosure. Temecula is a fairly isolated town (see map), and the city is very dependent on construction and/or long commutes. The combination of the housing bust, plus high oil prices, is hitting exurban towns like Temecula very hard.

From Bloomberg: Wealth Evaporates as Gas Prices Clobber McMansions, SUV Makers

``At $4 per gallon gas, $125 per barrel oil and $10 per million Btu natural gas, a lot of activity becomes uneconomical,'' says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com ...

The lifestyle of the exurban commuter may be one casualty.

Emerging suburbs and exurbs -- commuter towns that lie beyond cities and their traditional suburbs -- grew about 15 percent from 2000 to 2006, nearly three times as fast as the U.S. population, as Americans moved further out in search of more affordable houses or the bigger ones that are sometimes derided as McMansions.

``It was drive until you qualify'' for a mortgage, says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria, Virginia. ``You can't do that anymore. Your cost of transportation will spike too much.''

Assuming the price of gas stays around $4 a gallon or spikes higher, places like the Antelope Valley and Inland Empire may be looking at a permanent contraction. Meanwhile, Downtown's gentrification is likely to continue or accelerate, despite the downturn (though I don't see condo sales recovering anytime soon). Of course, Downtown isn't for everyone, but communities with good access to public transportation and that are close to employers are positioned to do better in the long term. Density is a dirty word for a lot of Angelenos, but for better or worse, it looks like suburban sprawl simply isn't economically sustainable for the average family.

I've used maybe half a tank of gas in the past month and that plus the decrease in rent means I'm feeling pretty happy about moving down here.

Back Under the Alexandria

The garage on 6th and Main raised their monthly rates to $175. To which I say, oh hell no. So after this month I'm back to parking...Under the Alexandra. Max the manager promises that he won't ever park my car in the sub-basement and says I can call the guards to open the gate for me so that I don't have to leave Kidlo in the car in order to get into the garage on weekends. So my blog name makes sense again and we won't have to go into debt just to pay for parking.

A Park for Kidlo

One thing that's not so great about living downtown with a kid is the lack of green space. We live just three blocks from Pershing Square, but there's no playground and that big concrete hole in the center is ugly and unappealing. There's Angels Knoll Park in Bunker Hill, but it's on a steep slope, and meh. Also not appealing. There are various parks in the planning stages, but who knows how long it'll take for them to get built (if some of the ever are).

But I'd read about a park near FIDM and Ralph's, so I packed Kidlo into the jogging stroller and walked over, even though it was 95 degrees today. It's a little less than a mile away from my apartment, so not too bad a walk even with the heat. It turned out to be a little jewel of a park, with grass, arbors covered in vines, a fountain and even a playground. It was so hot that Kidlo didn't want to move from the carriage, so we sat under an arbor and enjoyed the breeze for a while. It was early so the park was mostly empty, but as I left I saw a man and his two sons ride their bikes into the park. I'm glad that Reina will be able to talk Kidlo to the park without having to drive all the way to Griffith Park.

After the park we went to Ralphs and I did a little shopping. Very little because of how farking expensive it is. Jaysus, even with the price of gas it's still cheaper for us to drive to Trader Joe's and Costco. But it's nice to have a supermarket that's a quick bike ride away in case we need an onion or something.

While at Ralph's, I saw a pregnant woman shopping and a man carrying his son on his shoulders. It's nice to know I'm not the only person raising a kid down here. I think I'm going to try and get some sort of parents group together for downtown. I'm going to email a few bloggers and see if they'll give me a little space to put out the word.

Parking sucks downtown

After naming this blog Under the Alexandria, it looks like I won't be parking there anymore. I got home from a party at 6 p.m. with the baby in the car and my husband away for the evening, and the fucking gate was locked. The only way to get into the lot would've been to drive to 5th Street, unhook the baby from the car seat, walk into the Alexandria's lobby to ask the guards to unlock the gate, then hook the baby back into the car seat and drive around the block to get back to the gate. Fuck that. I drove to the lot on 6th and Main and parked there. It's $50 more a month to park there, but it has 24 hour access without having to jump through all these fucking hoops. We're going to keep the spot in the old garage for the woman who takes care of my son since she's never driving with the kid at a time when the gate is locked. But for me, we get to pay an extra $600 a year. Fuuuuuuck.

I will not, however, be changing the name of this blog. "In the Big Parking Lot on 6th and Main" doesn't have the same ring to it.