Struggling businesses hope customers return downtown

To survive the first few years of running a business, the owner has to see the cup “half full”.

Heather Younker is taking it a step further.  She is willing to let people see just how many ounces are left in her cup.

“We needed to be honest with the community and the customers,” said Younker, co-owner of Brewed Awakenings in Cedar Rapids.  Younker released an e-mail on Friday, calling for people to pick out three locally-owned businesses and spend $50 a month between them.  She even took the step to write that, for her business to survive, the coffeehouse needs thirty more customers each day.

“It's really not that much to save our businesses,” Younker said about the 3/50 Project, a group to encourage shoppers to support more locally-owned businesses.

Brewed Awakenings, at the corner of 1st Avenue and 13th Street SE in Cedar Rapids, sits a mile from the flood zone that washed into downtown Cedar Rapids twenty months ago.  Yet Younker said the flood has also hurt her bottom line.

“Traffic has a lot to do with it.  We weren't flooded but we are affected by the amount of businesses, the amount of people, who do go downtown.”

In the heart of the flood zone, Becky Bateman is working through another busy weekday lunch rush at Victor's on 3rd Street SE.

“We are busier now than pre-flood,” Bateman said.  “The reason being we were the first business to open after the flood.”  Victor's came back from the flood in August of 2008 and pulled in plenty of attention for opening first.   “We were the only coffee within six blocks of the river.”

Now Bateman points to the economy and not just flood recovery for any struggles.  “We watched our company clients stop ordering catering as often.  Those are the things that get cut, budget-wise.”  She also brought up recent layoffs at major downtown employers for cutting the number of customers coming through her door.

Two blocks away, the foot traffic isn't quite so brisk in front of Garden Gate Flower & Gift Shoppe.  Owner Rebecca Pflughaupt needed ten months to open up her 3rd Avenue SE business after the flood.

“I would so much rather have retail shops here,” Pflughaupt said.  “Competition is good.  We need to make it a destination.”

Having owned the store since late 2007, Pflughaupt said having the Paramount Theatre next door helped bring in more people passing through.  She said, if things don't change, “it won't be good”.

“A lot of customers say, ‘we need to come downtown and make you our florist'.  You see them one time and don't see them again,” Pflughaupt said.

Both Bateman and Pflughaupt said they would welcome more independent businesses, even as competitors, to make downtown Cedar Rapids a destination point for shoppers.

The 3/50 Project that Younker is part of stressed that $68 out of every $100 dollars spent “returns to the community” compared with $43 of every $100 spent with national chains.

“$50 a day, over the course of a week, can make a significant impact,” Bateman said.

Chris Earl, KCRG-TV