My thoughts on Staples
Editor:***** Please accept this copy instead of the previous letter sent by me.
For all of those people who are adamantly or even somewhat opposed to opening Staples in town, here might be an unintended consequence of your actions. Having a Staples adds another location/revenue source for the many diverse groups that rely on local business to meet funding needs to cover basic program levels. How many of these groups are you affiliated with (I can personally list 5 or 6)?
Convince the Republicans not be seen as “obstructionists” and support Gov. Brown’s proposal to let the people of CA decide via their vote if they want to extend the current taxes. Otherwise, any business(s) that you feel “keeps the charm of our city” are going to be continually solicited for a donation/support. There is not going to be any other way for these organizations to meet essential program needs.
It is the citizens of a town who determine to the degree a business succeeds or not.
5 thoughts on “My thoughts on Staples”
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We do NOT need Staples in our town!
Staples will generate more jobs in Sonoma.
I get the biggest yuck out of these people who are swinging from the chandeliers in rage over Staples setting up here in an already existing structure that has been as deserted as a ghost town for years, like several other commercial spaces have become in fact—-at least three within rock throwing distance of each other on the corridor in the depressed Boyes quarter alone.
The very worst that could befall this entire area by having a Staples at the I-12 elbow in your city is that it would amount to jabbing a toothpick in the rump of a dead horse. …in order for Staples to set up, NO trees will need to be chopped down, NO open space to be senselessly and artlessly butchered up and no eye-sore architectural warts erected that don’t already exist in profusion anyway.
These save-our-town freaks are way too late and way too little and are worse than absurd bleating like scalded eagles about what “this will do to our little town”…..Judas Priest gimme a damned break: WHAT little town? Tragically, a sadly and sickeningly, what was once a long time ago the quaint and somewhat etherial TOWN of Sonoma has long since become a cheap rubberneck trap and a city in all the wrong ways where everything is cheap and sleazy except, of course, the prices. Sonoma was once a very special place where discerning and discriminating people from the Western Hemisphere came to get away from every place else—-now it has long since become overrun by vacuous yuppies who have dragged every place else here with them and their families and thereby trashed the place and turned it into a pretentious dump that has the gall to consider itself a sister city to Aswan, Egypt, which I find out-of-the-chair laughable.
The “town” of Sonoma is no more…it is as dead as a door knob and it isn’t coming back…ever. And no one of these screaming mimis who are opposed to Staples is any more enraged about it than I…but life has to go on….and at least Staples opening up in this area may have some leverage in forcing most of the other merchants around here to quit assuming that everybody who walks through their front entrances is some stink-rich tourist from Malibu, Silicon Valley or Orange County and start charging us sane and civilized prices for a change…I think that is the real reason for all the shrieks and moans of the Staples bashers. As always in America, and particularly in your city of Slow-coma, FOLLOW THE MONEY.
I just love how this “issue” is all about everything except the truth. The debate is cloaked with phrases like “box-store” and “small-town charm” and blah blah blah. The truth is…we’re kind of snobs.
People are up in arms because a big chain is on the way. What about Safeway, CVS, Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Starbucks, Marriott, and my favorite…the Ford dealer that used to be in that vacant building? Doesn’t get much bigger than that. The real issue is that none of them has a reputation for being what Staples is, a discounter. If we let them in we all know who’s next. Yup…Wal-Mart. Well there goes the neighborhood.
Trust me, that just isn’t going to happen. We don’t fit that demographic, are not proximate to a major highway, and do not have large amounts of cheap land. Wal-Mart wants all of that and that’s why their in American Canyon.
The people who throw around “small-town charm” act like they are warriors in some noble cause. This has nothing to do with maintaining a lifestyle, it has to with marketing. Sonoma is an international wine country tourist destination and is heavily promoted as such. (Heck, we even have a film festival with the word “International” in it so it must be true) It’s much easier and more efficient to market something as quaint and charming rather than a complex community where people live, shop, and work. The latter may be true but it’s not marketable.
The other argument I hear is that Staples will unfairly compete with local businesses. Well Sonoma Market is flourishing despite the fact Safeway is right across the street and Whole Foods is a block away. There seem to be more taco trucks then ever so the “Bell” has clearly not run them out of town, and last time I checked Happy Dog was doing fine despite being less than 200’ from McDonald’s. Don’t get me wrong because I really love the folks at (store that shall remain nameless) but their motto should be “no, but we can order it”. A little competition now and then is not a bad thing.
NICE…