City needs to give businesses more help with atmosphere of downtown

The Obsession Box was a small gift shop in the heart of Saratoga’s downtown area. After struggling to attract business, store owner Pauline O-Daffer is closing her shop due to many issues that the city is neglecting to solve.

O-Daffer points to the lack of handicapped parking spots as one source of her problems. Additionally, O-Daffer claims the downtown area would benefit from “more signage,” citing city-wide distribution of advertisements and flyers as a viable means of spreading the word about downtown businesses.

“There needs to be more festivity,” she said. O-Daffer said the entire downtown tends to be bland and laments that potential patrons could drive around in circles through the area and not find a single store.

Businesses downtown struggle to make ends meet because of poor revenue and high rental fees, the latter of which totaled to nearly $50,000 per year for the Obsession Box.

The city needs to realize businesses need more help in the form of better street layouts and more generous space within buildings.

Look no farther than Los Gatos to see a thriving downtown. It has a open shopping area and the stores seem less crammed together and more inviting. Its success lies in the vast space and the variety of stores.

By making Saratoga’s downtown area more customer friendly and visually inviting, the city could help businesses stay afloat.

Opening the area up to restaurant chains such as Chipotle or McDonald’s would provide hungry diners with a legitimate reason to go downtown and consequently stimulate business. These popular chains would no doubt attract high school students who currently drive much farther than downtown for a burrito of burger at lunch. As a result, business would boom.

Additionally, the city could follow O-Daffer’s advice and try to advertise the various stores throughout the city by putting up signs (similar to the ones used for city council elections).

With these additions, the businesses won’t necessarily thrive, but will probably receive more attention, customers and maybe they will not go out of business.