Invest Locally

I am reading a book by Amy Cortese called "Locavesting: The Revolution in Local Investing and How to Profit From It".  In it, Ms. Cortese discusses the importance of investing locally in business, community and resources.  She provides different strategies and methods for investing locally and stresses that this "new" type of investment strategy may help to revolutionize how we think about investment goals and how we can benefit both financially and psychicly. 

The book has me thinking about why we do not do a better job in Wall of investing in our local businesses.  As a member of the board of the Chamber of Commerce, a local business owner, and an owner of multiple properties in town, I cannot understand why we have so many vacant offices on Route 34, yet continue to approve more "professional office space" on our highways.  The other day, while driving from the Collingswood Circle to the Route 70 interchange I was tempted to stop and photograph each and every "for lease" sign along the route.  I then realized that it would have added about 30 minutes to my ride if I were to stop at each and every vacant or partially vacant professional office.  I then thought, what can we do about this?

Most of us realize that having any vacant commerical (or other) property is not good for any of us.  Not only does it mean that there are fewer jobs in town, but it also means that buildings that are left unrented for months at a time may leave the buildings' owners carrying a heavy monthly payment with no return on investment.  This may mean, in many cases, that they cannot afford to pay their mortgage loans or taxes.  That burden then falls to the rest of us.  So, it is in our interests to ensure that local businesses continue to function and thrive in our town.

So you ask, what can we do about it.  First, I would recommend reading Amy Cortese's book.  She really makes the case for local investment.  Second, invest locally.  Whether it is in a new or existing business or simply using local proprietors rather than large chain stores we need to support those that help to pay down our local taxes, funnel the money back locally, and most importantly provide jobs to locals.  It has become abundantly clear over the past several years that our legislators are not going to do what needs to be done to improve any of these things, so we need to take it upon ourselves to improve our local economy.  Locavesting is one way to do that.

With elections upcoming in November, I hope that we, as a community, can send a message to our electeds and candidates over the course of the next five (5) months that action needs to be taken to encourage, promote, and support local business and investment.  In this regard, we need to elevate the political discourse.  We must focus debate and discussion where it belongs- on ways we can help local business create jobs and stimulate our local economy.  We need real, long term solutions to these problems, not short term gimmicks.   Most importantly, we need out-of- the- box thinking to get those vacant buildings rented which will, in turn, increase our tax ratables and, hopefully create jobs for our neighbors. 

I hope our local politicians can come up with some plans to solve some of these problems over the course of the upcoming campaign season and after.  It took years for us to get to this place and it will, likely, take years to get us out of it.  In the meantime, we should each, individually, look to how we can affect our local economy by investing locally.  Our households' and community's future depends on it.