Word: downtowner
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...kaleidoscopic Christmas displays began to blink on at stores along the main streets of the nation's cities last week, the mood of the merchants was anything but festive. Downtown retailers are hoping for a holiday buying spree to offset a year of laggard sales and inflation-riddled earnings. Economists are hoping for consumer spending to be a strong force in revitalizing the economy. The prospects for the near future are not promising...
Expensive Midi. The downtown merchants-who have to cope with the crime, grime and transport snarls of the central city-are being hurt worst. There are some exceptions; for example, Chicago's Marshall Field and San Francisco's I. Magnin are doing well. On the other hand, in the twelve months ended last August, retail sales in downtown Cleveland plunged 23%; they fell 12% in downtown Philadelphia, 10% in Los Angeles, Baltimore and Boston...
Willard Bent, the head of a company that embraces Brooks Brothers, Washington's Julius Garfinckel & Co. and other stores, reports that sales are off in part because "downtown stores are just not showing the results that branches are." Stanley Marcus, president of Neiman-Marcus, has made a fortune in downtown Dallas but now prefers locations away from the center. Compared with them, he says, "it takes a lot more effort and advertising to generate downtown business...
...fighting for our economic survival," says Jack Meier, chairman of Meier & Frank, the top department store in downtown Portland, Ore. His store's sales have dropped by one-third in the past twelve years and, like many other doyens of downtown, he argues that the central shopping districts will tumble into deeper trouble unless local governments provide more parking space and better mass transit. Adds Dexter Ware, a senior vice president of Detroit's Hudson Co.: "At some point, major cities must recognize that if they want to save the downtown stores, they will have to provide...
Haack had suggested the eventual scrapping of one of the Big Board's most cherished principles: that all member brokers must charge the same commissions on stock trades. The rule originated in 1792, when 24 brokers met under a buttonwood tree in downtown Manhattan to found the organization that later became the exchange. They agreed, among other things, not to try to undercut one another's commission rates. Ever since, the fixed-commission system has been generally viewed as essential to the Big Board's existence...