City Council Candidates Discuss Downtown Businesses
Two incumbents and three challengers discuss their views on businesses in downtown Havre de Grace.
Patch asked the candidates for the May 3 election to share their opinions on more than a dozen topics relating to the city.In this installment, City Council candidates—incumbents John Correri and Randy Craig, and challengers James Lauer, Diane Lawder, Lori Maslin and Barbara Wagner—address businesses in downtown Havre de Grace:
John Correri
Correri often mentions his family’s business background when it comes to his ties to the community.“My roots—anybody that knows me, knows my family had a business here in Havre de Grace since the 1890s. They finally folded tent in like the mid-'80s,” Correri said. “Those are the streets I grew up on, working in the family business. I know what it is to put the shoulders to the grind down there and work hard, sometimes from sunup to sundown.”
It’s because of that background the veteran public servant feels he knows what local businesses want and need. He said he’ll never overlook the importance of a family’s investment in small-town business.
“I understand what their goals are because I came from that basis of a strong family business,” he said. “I support them as much as I can.”
Randy Craig
Craig doesn’t think the downtown business district deserves any special consideration over other aspects of the city.“I think the city government’s job isn’t necessarily to support one particular business area over another. We have several,” Craig said. “The downtown business district has different problems and different solutions than those that are needed out at the industrial park, than those that are needed along Route 40. I think the city has to act in a broad way, and not overly focus resources in one particular area than another. They all have different, important things they bring to the city, from jobs and revenue and opportunities for citizens.”
Craig feels the city does a great deal for downtown business.
“One of the things that’s disappointing to me in many ways is the arts and entertainment district. The city council passed that in the first year or second year I was on city council. And that has some substantial tax credits available for small businesses,” Craig said. “It’s been very underutilized.”
Craig said Havre de Grace shouldn’t be in the business of running small businesses, but creating an environment for businesses to thrive.
“The main thing the city does is that we provide the prerequisites for business success,” Craig said. “We don’t run their business, we don’t write their business plans, we don’t finance their business. But what we provide are public safety, essentials that are needed for good business, infrastructure, and we provide them a foundation for doing it in a cost-effective way with no taxes. I think the city government has done that, and it needs to continue. That’s an ongoing effort.”
James Lauer
Lauer did not respond to repeated interview requests from Patch.Diane Lawder
Lawder thinks the city’s businesses need to focus on attracting a broader base of clientele.“Business owners need to come up with unique ideas that are going to attract young people, elderly people, middle-aged people. Right now, we don’t have that,” Lawder said. “We have a small young base that comes down to go to the bars. But they don’t go to Joe’s Department store to buy a pair of jeans.”
Lawder feels the city’s business district can grow by attracting a younger crowd—perhaps by creating an atmosphere similar to Baltimore’s hip Canton neighborhood.
“It’s not conducive to a 30-something, or a younger crowd. That’s what you need to do, get the interests of everybody,” Lawder said. “People don’t want to hear it. Mini-Canton, you’re going to get people down here.”
Lawder is in support of building upon the local shops in town and creating a place where people will want to stay for a day—or more.
“There’s nowhere to facilitate a lot of people. We don’t have a hotel,” she said. “You need something that’s going to make people want to stay here. The bed and breakfasts are awesome, but they’re not big enough to facilitate larger crowds.”
That, she says, is where Havre de Grace really loses out to its neighboring communities.
“Where do they go? Aberdeen? Aberdeen is getting our money,” she said. “Aberdeen is getting our customers.”
Lori Maslin
Maslin sees two kind of support for local business—from the community and from the government.“I’m not sure city government should be getting involved in the way people run their business,” she said. “I think we should facilitate a way to make it easier for businesses to come in and do business.”
Maslin owned and operated Ice Dreams Restaurant and Catering in Havre de Grace for years, and was among the first RAD loans through the city “in 1995 or 1996.”
She said the city should look at making sure such loans are grounded in sound, secured business plans.
She also feels the city’s “archaic” and “unclear” zoning regulations make it hard for potential business owners and the city alike. “The city can facilitate,” Maslin said. “Don’t put up roadblocks.”
Ultimately, she said, businesses need to operate intelligently. “That’s what my law practice is centered around. I own businesses, I run businesses,” she said.
One of the first things she’d suggest to local business owners in need of help—help yourself by adjusting your hours.
“Small business is about working your business. It’s not about playing your employees to cover it for you,” Maslin said. “There was many a winter night when Ice Dreams Restaurant and Catering was open until 9 or 10 o’clock at night in January and February with very little customers, but we were open. And I didn’t have an employee covering the place. I was there.”
Finally, Maslin is in support of bringing a grocery store—or a co-op—downtown to fill the void created when Save-a-Lot closed last October.
“I would love to see a food co-op,” she said. “I would love to see a grocery store that everybody would shop at.”
Barbara Wagner
Wagner thinks promotion is the key to boosting local businesses.But she also sees some more concrete options that the city could help facilitate.
“I think that if we could somehow alleviate the property tax burden ... I know a lot of businesses are not owner-operated, but it still affects the owner, and that trickles down to the renter,” Wagner said. “The more businesses we have down here, the better each business will do.”
Wagner and her husband, George, own Bahoukas Antique Mall and Beer MuZeum on Union Avenue. Vacancies are a concern for her. She wants to see her neighbors succeed, because success benefits the entire district.
The hurdles that potential new owners must leap are often too much to clear, she feels.
As she sees it: “A lot of businesses come along that would like to invest here. Gosh, who wouldn’t? You have this beautiful waterfront and this cute, quaint town. ‘Oh, wow, here’s a gem that’s ready to pop.’ And then you go see Jay Bautz and he says, ‘It’s not on the list. I’m sorry. I can’t let you do that. You’ll have to go to the board of appeals.’ And now we’ve got six months and however much money it costs to go through that, and they say, I don’t feel like doing it, and they take it somewhere else.”
More incentives and simpler zoning are two areas where Wagner feels the city can improve the environment for new business.
She’s tired of the bitterness between businesses, pointing to the jealousy of one owner when another gets help from the city as an example.
“If they provide some sort of incentives to bring businesses in, and we didn’t get that incentive, that’s all right, because we’ll do better,” she said. “I think we need to be more open-minded in business recruitment.”
