Come Home to Montrose
Main Street is like a slice of Hometown Americana: It takes you back to the days when you met at the counter of the local soda shop, walked your mail down to the post office and shopped at the general store for all of your needs. It speaks to an era when life was less hectic and moved at a friendlier pace. This is what you will find when you “Come Home To Montrose.”
The Montrose Shopping Park is beautiful tree-lined street on Honolulu Avenue that is a delight to stroll down. This main shopping district in Montrose is comprised of a variety of restaurants, service shops, boutiques, clothing stores, and fitness studios catering to the needs of the local community. At the Montrose Shopping Park the shops are friendly and the merchandise is different. Our shops aren`t chain stores, they are “mom-and-pop” shops where the storeowners know customers on a first-name basis and customers get to know the local merchants, receiving personal help in finding that “special item.” The Montrose Shopping Park is a special district within the City of Glendale who designated Montrose as Glendale’s official “Old Town.” Montrose continues to be one the premier gems in Glendale’s crown.
Remember, when you come to Montrose to shop you are doing so much more than picking up the items you want and need. You are helping to sustain our area and our local economy. That is why we encourage you to “Shop Local First”. Why shop at a locally owned business first? The following 10 reasons show how more money spent at local businesses is reinvested in your community creating diversity and helping the community maintain and create its unique appeal.
Top Ten reasons to Think Local – Buy Local – Be Local
- Supports Yourself and Keeps Dollars in the Local Economy: Your dollars spent in locally-owned businesses have three times the impact on your community as dollars spent at national chains. When shopping locally, you simultaneously create jobs, fund more city services through sales tax, invest in neighborhood improvement and promote community development. Several studies have shown that when you buy from an independent, locally owned business, rather than a nationally owned business, significantly more of your money is used to make purchases from other local businesses and providers. (Click here to see summaries of a variety of economic impact studies; these include case studies showing that locally owned businesses generate a premium in enhanced economic impact to the community and our tax base.)
- Keeps our Community Unique: Where we shop, where we eat and have fun — all of it makes our community home. Our one-of-a-kind businesses are an integral part of the distinctive character of this place. Our tourism businesses also benefit. “When people go on vacation they generally seek out destinations that offer them the sense of being someplace, not just anyplace.” ~ Richard Moe, President, National Historic Preservation Trust.
- Fosters Local Decision Making: Local businesses are owned by people who live in this community making them less likely to leave and are more invested in the community’s future. Local ownership means that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of their decisions. Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.
- Encourages Local Prosperity: Entrepreneurship fuels America’s economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class. A growing body of economic research shows that in an increasingly homogenized world, entrepreneurs and skilled workers are more likely to invest and settle in communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character.
- Creates More Good Jobs: Small local businesses are the largest employer nationally and in our community, provide the most jobs to residents.
- Local Shops Value You More: Evidence from numerous surveys show people receive better customer care and service locally. Local businesses survive by their reputation and repeat business. This means you get a higher standard of service and people with a better understanding of the products they are selling who take more time to get to know you.
- Buy what you want, not what someone wants you to buy: A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term. A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based not on a national sales plan but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.
- Puts Your Taxes to Good Use: Local businesses in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure investment and make more efficient use of public services as compared to nationally owned stores entering the community.
- Supports Community Groups and Organizations: Small business owners give, on average, 250% more support to local community groups than larger businesses give. This contribution gives more support to our local community.
- Reduces Environmental Impact: Locally owned businesses often stock a high percentage of local sourced goods requiring less transportation and generally set up shop in town or city centers as opposed to developing on the fringe. This generally means contributing less to sprawl, congestion, habitat loss and pollution helping reduce our global footprint.