Dear City Council Members,
My name is Karsten Iwers, and I am the owner of Harvest Furniture at 639 Santa Cruz Avenue. We have operated Harvest Furniture in Menlo Park for well over 20 years.
The closure of Santa Cruz Avenue in its various forms has been devastating to our business.
While I do not fault you for not being unfamiliar with retail dynamics and I commend you for taking measures to attempt to support local businesses, I must criticize your insistence on keeping this misguided idea in place. Any brick and mortar retailer will tell you that reducing vehicle and foot traffic as well as parking, and effectively hindering access to physical retail and restaurant locations will affect such businesses adversely. Some restaurants such as Leftbank undoubtedly benefited from this measure because it provided additional space to accommodate patrons, but the majority, such as Posh Bagel, Boulanger and even Bistro Vida suffered by losing daily exposure, parking, and access to their businesses.
I encourage you to inquire with commercial real estate experts to learn that foot traffic, vehicle traffic, parking, and accessibility are a key measure in the value of a commercial property.
We have experienced a 30+ percent reduction in revenue over the past seven months in Menlo Park compared to the same period a year before while our other Harvest Furniture locations have seen an increase in sales over the same period.
As a downtown merchant, I take an interest in the success of my neighbors, including restaurants. We thrive as a community of diverse businesses and drive customers to each other by offering visitors a well-rounded downtown experience. In order to allow restaurants to open their doors safely to patrons, I favor parklets. The makeshift tent structures on Santa Cruz Avenue are an embarrassment to our beautiful downtown and are blocking the view of established businesses, such as Harvest Furniture.
I ask that you reopen Santa Cruz Avenue on March 1st, as planned, to allow our downtown business community to return to being a thriving, welcoming and convenient shopping and dining destination.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Karsten Iwers
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Karsten Iwers
harvest
www.shopharvest.com
