Get creative to help small businesses survive

I am writing in regard to a recent commentary by Marin IJ Lifestyles Editor Vicki Larson (“Is it the end of Marin’s Main Streets?” Dec. 22). Larson is so right about Amazon and the big box stores.

She is also right about “tony boutiques” and $200 jeans on our little town Main Street. Do the owners of the boutiques really need our patronage? Do their workers earn much more than minimum wage?

I would like to save the coffee shops, the barber shops, hair and nail shops, family owned and operated restaurants and the wine shop (of course). I want to save businesses where the owners and workers work hard and provide services and goods that are really useful to the community.

These (or any) kinds of businesses create “gathering places” and hold together our communities and make downtown Main Streets so lovable.

Take beautiful San Anselmo, for example. There are so many empty storefronts. The businesses are here today and gone a few months later. This has been going on for decades and it is not just the flooding issue that is the problem.

How about more housing in downtown? We should convert or repurpose some of the shops to living spaces.

Town officials should charge the owners of these empty buildings a “tax” when they are not rented at the high prices they are asking. We are all aware that the malls all over America are dying.

Former President Bill Clinton was fond of saying that we need to keep reinventing ourselves. I think he was right.

— Nancy Oswald,

San Anselmo