Asheville Grown Business Alliance

Big Ideas for 2012

ashevillegrown — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:42:08 +0000

In 2012, let’s dedicate ourselves to a “maker” system of economics that’s based on creating new value, not trading old value. Let’s focus on those who develop tools within our community to replace consumption as an end in itself, and create a manifesto that guides city contracts and organizations, including the Chamber of Commerce, to seek the participation of local creative entrepreneurs first.

To encourage more entrepreneurs, the city should make it easier to launch a business. Navigating our building and fire codes and permitting costs is daunting and can result in a heavier-than-anticipated debt load, especially for manufacturers.

Leaders must recognize the arts and cultural events as part of economic development. Our officials need to embrace the vitality of our community’s creative sector and pursue more strategic planning and top-down directives aimed at involving small, creative businesses and grass-roots cultural innovators. As economic drivers, outdoor cultural events can be encouraged, not just managed or kept from causing harm. “Asheville is filled with thousands of creative entrepreneurs whose vital energy is, as yet, unharnessed. Let’s bring that to bear on our economic woes,” urges Kitty Love, executive director of the Asheville Area Arts Council.

In 2010, WNC consumers bought $62 million worth of local food, the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project estimates. As a top food destination, Asheville is at the center of this market. In 2012, city leaders should be seen at the tailgate markets and farm tours. They can lead by example, choosing local food and food providers for conferences and events, and buying community-supported agriculture subscriptions for themselves and their employees. By promoting the Asheville City Market’s ability to accept EBT payments and encouraging area schools to buy locally grown food, they would show that they understand the critical link between our food and our community’s health.

Let’s recognize the deep connection between quality public schools and a thriving economy. “Asheville City Schools are the city’s schools, and we must invest in our urban public schools to keep families within the city limits who will live, work and shop in our urban centers,” notes Leah Ferguson, co-director of the Asheville City Schools Foundation.

Embrace our community fiber network & the increasing importance of our community’s ability to run and operate our own high speed broadband. Our community is lucky to have both a nonprofit broadband “middle-mile” provider (ERC Broadband) and a nonprofit broadband “last-mile” provider (Mountain Area Information Network). By supporting local nonprofit broadband infrastructure local independent businesses are ensured affordable access and the freedom to innovate at the grassroots level and a crucial accessible alternative to the absentee-owned cable and telephone companies.

Leaders should publicly shift their bank accounts to small local banks and credit unions & encourage the city, county, foundations, utilities & businesses to follow suit & develop relationships with the banks that are willing to invest back into their communities.

When considering subsidizing businesses to move their operations here, we should consider what kinds of impact shifting those subsidies would provide locally-owned independent businesses & business incubators within our community.

It’s time to join the ever-increasing number of cities (including Los Angeles and most recently New York City) that have taken a stand against corporate personhood, adopting resolutions declaring that money isn’t speech and corporations aren’t people.

These are just a few key issues. Ultimately, we hope 2012 will be a pivotal year for our city leaders to embrace our widely accepted community campaign, promoting the key role of locally owned businesses in our economy’s vitality.

Originally published in the Mountain Xpress: http://www.mountainx.com/article/38979/Community-economics

Shifting to Local Yields More Jobs, Stronger Communities

ashevillegrown — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:01:37 +0000

by Jeff Milchen and Michael Shuman

According to the National Retail Federation, Americans will spend an average of about $700 per person on holiday season shopping this year and, despite the hype surrounding Black Friday, the busiest shopping week immediately precedes Christmas. But rather than enduring long lines and sparse service at chain stores, we urge you take a different approach: seek out your local independent merchants and service providers, meet your neighbors and fully integrate your values in your purchasing decisions.

This is not a call to “get out and shop” — far from it. In fact, we encourage you consider many great gifts that don’t increase consumption: a meal at an independent restaurant, tickets to a local concert, durable locally-made goods. Most of all, consider the many benefits of patronizing local independent businesses for whatever you choose. Among the benefits:

* You’ll create local jobs. And not just any jobs. While chain outlet’s create mostly positions for clerks and cashiers, local businesses are hiring accountants, graphic designers, webmasters and many other positions the chains (or online giants) centralize at corporate headquarters. A multitude of small entrepreneurs provides a more vital and durable financial base than dependence on a few large corporations.

* Local businesses typically require less driving, consume far less land and have a lighter environmental impact. Because they focus primarily on local markets, local businesses place a high premium on being easily accessible by local residents. They tend to bolster community character and vitality, rather than segregating residential areas from clusters of big box development.

* Part of what makes any community great is how well it preserves its unique culture, foods, ecology, architecture, history, music, and art. Local businesses celebrate these features, while chains tend to homogenize, following a corporate template rather than respecting local architecture or customs.

* We know from studies by respected social scientists like C Wright Mills and Melville Ulmer going back more than half a century (Small Business and Civic Welfare) that small-business oriented communities “provided for their residents a considerably more balanced economic life than did big business cities” and “the general level of civic welfare was appreciably higher.” A few years ago, Professor Thomas Lyson of Cornell University updated that study by looking at 226 U.S. counties dependent on big outside manufacturers. He found these communities “vulnerable to greater inequality, lower levels of welfare, and increased rates of social disruption than localities where the economy is more diversified.”

* Studies of voting behavior suggest economically diverse communities have higher participation rates in local politics. The long-term relationships fostered by local business tend to enhance commitment to civic institutions like schools, churches, charities, and fraternal leagues that are essential to both local economic success and community cohesiveness.

* Finally, going local is better for you! You’ll enjoy more personal interactions, more distinctive choices, and real value.

We write on behalf of two organizations that help advance a broader Localization Movement working to revitalize communities, downtowns and independent businesses of all kinds, the American Independent Business Alliance and Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. Along with other key organizations, we’ve joined forces for the first time to advance a new campaign, Shift Your Shopping, which urges us all to “Choose Local and Independent” for the holidays.

That doesn’t mean asking anyone to swear off shopping online, dining at chains, or sacrifice their wishes. Even a modest shift of 10% more spending going to independent community-based businesses this season would create dramatic changes for the better in our economy, including a wave of new job creation (especially if we seek out more domestically-madegoods).

Our choices of what and where to buy impact not only us and the people we give to, but the prosperity of our community and even our country. Along with helping your neighbors and community, you might find “going local” turns holiday shopping into a far more enjoyable experience.

Jeff Milchen is a co-founder of the American Independent Business Alliance, which helps communities develop effective buy local/independent campaigns and many other pro-local initiatives.

Michael Shuman is research director for the Business Alliance for Local Living Economiesand author of The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition.

more information can be found here: http://www.amiba.net/news/2011-media/buy-local-shuman-milchen

The BIG CRAFTY Golden Holiday

ashevillegrown — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 16:14:16 +0000

• 90 hand-selected indie crafters, artists & makers
• Hand-crafted beer from Pisgah, French Broad & Highland Breweries!
• Local treats from Short Street Cakes, Ursa Minor Coffee & Firestorm Cafe
• Festive DJ’d music

Plus free admission to the Asheville Art Museum!!

We’ll be there with stickers, Love Asheville shirts and this is a great opportunity to purchase the Asheville Go Local Card. Shifting your shopping made easy!

Taking Back Black Friday

ashevillegrown — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:12:15 +0000

This holiday season we’re reaching a wider audience than ever before. We’re asking our community to participate by taking back their lives on Black Friday. Instead of waking up at 4am, waiting in long lines, bumper to bumper traffic, the frenetic madness of sales and crowds, we invite you to slow down and enjoy the day after Thanksgiving.

Asheville has 250 independent restaurants, a dozen shopping districts fraught with local entrepreneurs catering to unique tastes, hundreds of artists who open their studios to the public and galleries who showcase them. On every block one can find films, theatrical performances, live music and every sort of inspiring entertainment. Many of us who live here forget that there is so much to experience. Asheville is truly a gift in itself and a hotbed of culture unlike any you’ll find anywhere in the US.

In the spirit of Shift Your Shopping, take your family, meet up with friends and laugh, live and remember to love on the day after Thanksgiving.

Ice Cream, Ashvegas & Pleasure Chest OH MY!

ashevillegrown — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:08:57 +0000

YOU’RE INVITED!

Tuesday November 22 5pm- 8pm

Local blog ASHVEGAS unveils its fabulous facelift

with live music by Pleasure Chest

a benefit for Asheville Grown

The Hop Ice Cream Cafe

640 Merrimon Ave.

Shift Your Shopping – A Nationwide Campaign

ashevillegrown — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:38:34 +0000

More than 150 communities across North America, along with partner organizations including Asheville Grown, the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA), Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and New England Local Business Forum, announced the launch of their “Shift Your Shopping” holiday campaign, an unprecedented national campaign that encourages residents to take job creation and economic concerns into their own hands by exercising their power to strengthen their own local economies.

Online at ShiftYourShopping.org, the campaign seeks to build an annual tradition that strengthens local economies, expands employment, nurtures a sense of community, and provides a more relaxed, fun, and rewarding gift-buying experience.

Americans are about to spend a large portion of their annual shopping budget between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31—the National Retail Federation predicts about $700 per shopper. Numerous studies show that if those dollars are shifted to locally owned, independent businesses, they’ll generate 2-3 times as much economic activity in local communities than if that money had been spent at a national chain. Across North America, that could mean billions of dollars of local economic impact.

Shift Your Shopping combines the efforts of AMIBA and BALLE with more than 150 local business alliances comprised of over 38,000 local businesses. Asheville Grown Business Alliance, along with Somerville Local First in Massachusetts and Oakland Grown in California, have been the initial business networks working steadily on the creation of this national campaign. ShiftYourShopping.org provides access to resources from all 150 alliances, including templates that allow anyone to spread the message easily in their community.

Anyone can participate and make a direct impact where they live.

Feast Local

ashevillegrown — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 20:45:12 +0000

Asheville Grown has partnered up with the Appalachian Sustainable Agricultural Project (ASAP), Creperie Bouchon, Sunburst Trout Farms, Fork Mountain Farm, Headwaters of Poverty Farm, Three Graces Dairy, The Chop Shop Butchery & Raw Shakti Chocolate to bring you Feast Local, Asheville’s 4th Local Social.

Date: Sunday, Oct, 23
Time: 3:30pm
Place: Creperie Bouchon 62 N. Lexington Ave. Courtyard
Cost: $10/head at the door. Creperie will be serving up delicious hors d’oeuvres fit for all you local zombies straight from our local farmers.
Entertainment: Pleasure Chest will bring their foot-stompin’, garter droppin’ tunes to the party. Dressing as your inner ZOMBIE highly encouraged!

Local Socials are great networking events bound to spark ideas & creativity. Meet your neighbors and the people who are the heart and soul of Asheville.

Special thanks to Brownstone Realty & Graphics Four for making this possible!

20% of the proceeds will go back to Asheville Grown and ASAP

See you there!

Our Community, Our Economy, Our Schools

ashevillegrown — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:17:50 +0000

We’re partnering with the Asheville City Schools, participating local independent businesses & our community. Get a Love Asheville – Go Local Card & you’ll receive special offers, discounts, insider info & more at some of your favorite local and independent businesses. Plus you’ll be supporting our local public schools including over 4,000 kids in our community. The card is only $15 and will be sold through the school system as well as at a few select business locations starting in November. The discounts will be good throughout 2012 for cardholders. In addition, $10 from each card will go right back to our schools to support our kids who grow our future.

If you are a local, independent business & you wish to get involved, please contact Beth Russo at ashevillegolocalcard@gmail.com.

Stick It (#3)

ashevillegrown — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:15:24 +0000

Latest sticker coming your way!

32 Banks – a local mystery:

ashevillegrown — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:05:05 +0000

Click to view slideshow.

What is the history behind these murals? Was this building originally a skating rink?

From Ann Wright of Pack Library:

“The tax office records show that the building was constructed in 1929. Banks Street is in the directory for that year, but that specific address, 32 Banks, doesn’t show up in the city directories until 1939. At that time, it was the Standard Paper Sales. The company stayed at that address until 2010. I checked the directories at five year intervals and found no other occupants. I also looked at the Sanborn maps; the only thing that shows up is the paper company.

I suppose it’s possible that someone else used the building for that first ten years, from 1929 until 1939, but we don’t have anything that documents it.”

The building recently sold & there is no word on whether the new owner will preserve these paintings, nor what the plans for the building are.