Greed, Part I....
After winning a "Best of Boston" prize as the best neighborhood dry cleaner, South End Cleaners and Tailors on Tremont Street got something else - a rent increase of almost double. According to the Boston Globe, the landlord, after serving an eviction notice, informed the award-winning owners that he would be taking over the space and opening his own dry cleaning business. This, even though the landlord has no dry-cleaning experience. This yutz/landlord has seemingly forgotten about what makes a neighborhood business, and particularly a business that has won a "best of" award, successful - something called "goodwill."
"Goodwill" is the likelihood that the business owner will let someone pick up his shirts even after that someone has forgotten his wallet, allowing for payment next time. Goodwill is making sure that someone gets her dress back a day earlier than it would usually be ready because someone really needs it for a special occasion. Goodwill is not knocking a hard-working business owner out of the ring so that you can take over - you can't really buy goodwill. It has to be earned. Greedy landlords don't deserve it.
And in the bigger scheme, the loss of a well-liked neighborhood dry cleaner is just another loss that suffocates a neighborhood of its soul. The dry cleaning plastic bags on my shirts that warn against the "danger of suffocation" were more appropriate than I thought. Anyone notice a theme happening in the South End?
posted by thesouthender at 3:45 PM
3 Comments:
Not often I agree with your view of the neighborhood, but on this one you are right on the money. We need to protect small business not only in this neighborhood, but in this country. A point needs to be made in the form of a boycott of this new business for such an exploitation of circumstances. Shame on the landlord.
I can Only hope the dry cleaners finds a more welcoming landlord somewhere in the area.(There are a FEW store fronts avail.)
It USED to be a boycott here might be viable, I'm not so sure there is enough community involvement/ coheasion now to slam this landlord.
I'm surprised Tremont Drug survives and that there is not another Starbucks closer to our soon-to-be Doggie Plaza.
These South End landlords are too much!
The new spa by the ballet school got flooded out by their sprinklers because the landlord broke their HVAC system. Now the landlord is trying to evict them for not paying the rent while they were shut down!
I would be down to boycott the new cleaners. What a jerk!
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