Midweek - article

(please note our corrections/comments in RED per conversations, meetings, & facts we have collected)

June 15, 2011

Listening To The Land

Mitch D’Olier of Kaneohe Ranch is sprucing up Kailua town, not always to the liking of some residents, but he says he follows one guiding principle: Listen to the land  

By Chad Pata

Mitch D’Olier has a vision for Kailua town, and is guided by advice his old friend Kenny Brown once gave him.

Through his first nine years as president of Kaneohe Ranch, Mitch D’Olier had been beset by criticisms that he and his company were trying to change the very nature of Kailua. (ask yourself, has Kailua changed in the last nine years?) Whether it was the three-story parking structure behind Longs or the new Target on Hahani Street, it seemed clear to a small, vocal contingent that D’Olier is out to destroy everything that makes Kailua Kailua.

But from D’Olier’s perspective, he came to the helm at a time when change was going to happen regardless, (but what type of change is the issue at hand?  Small, local businesses and parks, or mainland big-box stores?) and he wanted to do what was best to revitalize downtown Kailua while keeping its small town charm.

“When I joined Kaneohe Ranch, 16 of the 45 acres in Kailua owned by Kaneohe Ranch were coming off of 55-year leases that were ending,” says D’Olier, who ran Victoria Ward prior to coming over the Pali.

“When a lease ends, you get back a pretty old, tired 50-year-old building that, no matter what you have done to try to have the tenant maintain it, won’t have been maintained like you would have maintained it. That was going to cause change, and that is the context for this.” (how do you know the new tenants will maintain the property any better? --Hence the 6 month old hanging blue tarp in Longs.  And, why wasn't this enforced with the previous tenants?)

The properties it was taking over had all been built before regulations were in place concerning zoning and parking, leaving a heavily used shopping area with a dearth of parking and a brand new drug store and Whole Foods slated to move in, adding to the problem.

The fix was to be a simple one: a three-story structure built in-block so it wouldn’t even be visible once the surrounding buildings were completed, and with the construction of Longs nearing completion, a decision had to be made.

“We didn’t have a lot of time. Longs said, ‘Build it now or don’t build it, we can’t operate a store while you’re building a structure,’” recalls D’Olier. “So we didn’t have the luxury of taking the time in the community to prepare the community. And there was a lot of hue and cry in the community, and that made me realize that we have a lot of communication to do.”

So Kaneohe Ranch set up an 18-month community planning process, holding six four-hour meetings in the Kailua Intermediate School cafeteria to get input from residents on how they wanted the change to be realized. (this was in 2005 -- needs/ideas change since then)

“We appreciate the continued input we have gotten from everybody, and we try to listen and we are always open to ideas and comments,” says D’Olier, who has lived in Hawaii for the past 40 years (but not in Kailua). “Understand that the context for a lot of this is the termination of a lot of leases, and that is going to drive a lot of change just by reason of itself and that, as a community, let’s just try to do our best going forward.”

One of the big ones was preservation of Hamakua Hillside, the green ridge that serves as a backdrop for Kailua town. While a retirement community was once planned for those hills, Kaneohe Ranch is now working to sell the land back to the state so it can be used for public recreational use.

Two walkways are planned for the hills, one by the stream and one going up the ridge, providing yet another way for Kailua residents to stay in shape while enjoying their environment (along with renting bicycles and those ugly Rent-a-bike stands).

“A friend of mine named Kenny Brown told me you have to let the land tell you what it wants to be,” says D’Olier, who received his law degree from the University of Iowa. “You really have to get in touch with the land, and he was exactly right about that.” (so how has he "listened to the land")

As part of D’Olier’s expressed desire to invigorate Kailua came the idea of the Kailua Night Market. He approached the Department of Agriculture and the crew from Kapiolani Community College Farmers Market, and they came up with the Thursday night concept, housed in the new parking structure to prevent rainouts and add to the utility of the building.

“I figured we could use the amenity, bring together farmers and local residents and get people to stay downtown at night,” says D’Olier, who claims there were 3,000 people on the first night and that they are still drawing more than 1,500 every week.

“It brought the community together. A lot of social capital develops from people being together in places, and there are all kinds of people I see every Thursday in the farmers market who I might not otherwsieever see.”
Kaneohe Ranch has been part of this community dating back to 1893, when it actually was a ranch, and has evolved as the Windward side has, changing from farming to land holding as the Wilson Tunnel and Pali Highway brought a new population to Kailua. Through the changes, it has maintained certain philosophies that are readily evident when you walk around the new Kailua Town Center.

First is a commitment to art. Throughout the center you will find murals, fountains and mosaics that are required by the very tenets of the company. As a nod to Harold Castle’s affinity for dogs, there is even a dog water fountain street-side of the Whole Foods building.

One also will notice the oversized, shaded sidewalks, meant to entice people to get out of their cars. For D’Olier, a big part of keeping the small town feel is having pedestrians rather than drivers. (have you ever tried to cross the street in Kailua lately?) 

“Now my job is how to bring these businesses in and keep the character of a small place, and that is the fun of my job - things like public art, dog fountains and the Hamakua Nature Walk,” he says. (how is he "keeping the character" if he is tearing down all the old buildings?)

But it is not all fun. The other controversy D’Olier has been battling has been the Target store. Opponents have even gone so far as to create a website to post concerns over jobs being taken, small businesses being run out of town and traffic bringing the city to a screeching halt.

The uproar leaves D’Olier scratching his head a bit. For starters, Kaneohe Ranch didn’t recruit Target. Target actually came and purchased the lease from Don Quijote all on its own. Secondly, it is simply replacing one big super store with a newer, nicer super store.

“With Target, it seemed to be Big Box hatred, though the box isn’t much bigger than Holiday Mart was before,” says D’Olier. “I was surprised by the vehemence of the Target thing. Some of it was corporate hate, and some of it was hatred of national brand names.

“Even though we already had a Macy’s and a Longs and a Starbucks, they didn’t want any national names and just as soon preferred I took all the national names out and started all over again. So our question was: What works? Should we be in retail at all or should it be all offices?”

Now that the traffic fears have been allayed, construction has begun with the store due to open in July of next year. (if they get their permit)

As a show of its commitment to the community, Target Foundation rebuilt the library at Blanche Pope Elementary School from the ground up. New white smart boards were installed, new computers sit atop the desks and 2,000 new volumes of books were brought in. (Target does this everywhere in the US.  They buy peoples happiness)

“They are trying to create a love of reading with all children,” says D’Olier, who moved here from the south side of Chicago. “Literacy is something that Target is all about nationally. They told me they were community guys, but I never thought anything like that would come about that fast.” (because so many of us are so unhappy)

D’Olier also likes to point out that Target was going to be built somewhere on the Windward side and people are going to shop there regardless. Keeping it in Kailua will bring more dollars to the town and to the peripheral shops around it. (how is a mainland store keeping "more dollars" in the town?  The money spent goes to the coporate headquarters in Minneapolis)

Despite all the criticisms he has had to endure in the job, D’Olier still looks at it as the best thing that could have happened for him.

“I was asked to take the job as president of Kaneohe Ranch at the same time as I was asked to take the job as president of the Harold Castle Foundation,” says D’Olier.

“The combination of the two - the chance to really try to give back to the community and make the philanthropy more effective to the benefit of all of Hawaii’s people and to build assets for this place - that was an opportunity unlike any I had ever seen, and it has turned out to be as rewarding as I thought it would be.”

D’Olier met his wife Bambi while in school at the University of Iowa. After graduating they came to visit Oahu and he immediately fell in love with the Islands. Bambi agreed to move out here for one year - 40 years ago. A lawyer by trade, he worked in processing transactions between companies for 19 years, making him the natural choice when Hawaiian Airlines needed a new man to help them out of the financial wilderness.

This led him to Victoria Ward where he spent nine years before joining Kaneohe Ranch in 2002.

While the company does keep him busy, recreational diving is the family hobby, though the new grandkids have made Disneyland much more of a destination than the Great Barrier Reef for the foreseeable future.

Hawaii Business - article

May 2011

 

Big Box Stores

Just What Shoppers Want or Just Plain Evil?

By Jerry Burris

 

The critics' story is familiar: Giant stores move into an American community and destroy its small businesses, local values and sense of place.

The same story is being told now in Hawaii, as shoppers abandon longtime neighborhood businesses to buy at the big-box stores owned by outside corporations.

The truth is that this retail trend has been occurring in Hawaii for almost a century and the outcome is more complicated than this simplified tale suggests.

"Success depends on the whim of the consumer," says Carol Pregill, executive director of the Retail Merchants Association of Hawaii. "Stores show up, are great for a while, then they disappear."
Shoppers always like extra options, Pregill says, and whether you like them or not, the big boxes have brought "excitement" into Hawaii's retail market.

Big boxes often present a difficult choice for local shoppers: supporting Island businesses vs. saving money. The state government has not acted against big boxes, but there has been action and concern at the local level:
• Kauai County Council has banned "super-stores";
• Maui County Council had considered a similar proposal but it's on the back burner for now;
• On Oahu, some Kailua residents tried to stop a Target store there, but the landowner has signed a lease to move the project forward.

Back in 2003, state legislators asked the Legislative Reference Bureau to study the impact of big retailers on small and medium businesses in Hawaii. Researcher Peter G. Pan took on the study, largely using data from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

It was clear that the arrival of Costco, Home Depot and Walmart coincided with the decline of smaller, independent retailers. For instance, after Barnes & Noble and Borders came to Hawaii, the Honolulu Book Shops chain folded.


But was correlation causation?

After studying the issue, Pan was not sure.

"This is a demanding if not impossible task," he reported. "Businesses close for a host of reasons aside from competition from big boxes." Such reasons range from land, inventory and labor costs to family decisions, leasing costs, insurance and more.

"Even if the DBEDT could identify small and medium locally owned retailers that claimed big-box competition caused them to close down, there is no reason to guarantee those claims were true."

From an overall state economic standpoint, DBEDT said, the impact of big boxes is minimal, with consumers shifting spending from one place to another but not increasing or decreasing it dramatically. "The winner in this new retailing era would, thus far, appear to be the consumer."

More recently, DBEDT analysts considered taking a fresh look at this issue but decided it was a nearly impossible assignment.

"From our point of view," says analyst Eugene Tien, "the (total) of state income is fixed. If you spend at this store, you will not spend at another. That means to some extent the big-box stores will force out the smaller ones, but it is hard to quantify."

Some at DBEDT wondered if the decline in small, individual stores might be more associated with generational change, shifting priorities and the fact that many established locations are worth more as real estate than as retail operations.

"There is disagreement among economists about whether a small shop went out of business just because Sports Authority or Walmart was there," says one DBEDT official. "Just to say so many mom and pops have gone away since the big boxes came in is not enough to (persuade) our economists."

A 2010 study commissioned by Sarasota County in Florida was not so equivocal. The city wanted to know the impact of big boxes on property taxes, and J. Patrick Whalen and Joseph Minicozzi of Public Interest Projects (a group that promotes, among other things, "smart growth") concluded that dense, mixed-use urban development generates much more property tax revenue per acre than big boxes or isolated shopping malls.

"What is most surprising to me is that it's taken planners so long to ask such questions and begin looking at the data in this way," says Peter Katz, director of urban planning for Sarasota.

A 2007 report by Elena G. Irwin and Jill Clark of Ohio State University, published in the Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, looked at the many other studies of big boxes around the nation. They said these various other reports concluded:

• Big boxes force some existing retailers out of business.
• Consumers save a lot of money when grocery superstores open in their community. Competition from the superstore drives down prices at other grocery stores, so all local households – not just those who shop at the superstore – save an average of 25 percent in food expenditures.
• Retail wages at the county level decline by about 7.5 percent as a result of the opening of a Walmart store.
• Higher infrastructure costs occur due to traffic congestion and other factors.

The threat of bigger stores is old news for the Mainland and Hawaii. From the time the S.H. Kress Department Store opened in Hilo in 1932, local people have worried that big outside retailers would destroy our Island economy and bankrupt countless mom and pops. The same arguments were heard when Sears, Longs and Safeway first entered the market. In each case, they changed the retail landscape and pushed a few stores over the edge, always because local customers wanted to shop at the new stores.

When Ala Moana Center opened after statehood, the downtown Honolulu shopping district centered around Fort Street slumped. Who would go into a local dress shop when there was a huge Sears nearby, with long hours and plenty of free parking? Many people see big-box stores as simply another turn of the wheel in the hyper-competitive world of retail sales.

Kauai County councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura, who led the successful effort to ban superstores there, recently attended a conference in Florida at which researchers Whalen and Minicozzi spoke.

"They would have put our small businesses out of business," Yukimura tells Hawaii Business. "There was also a question of scale. We have a four-story height limit on buildings, but the square footage still would have been immense. It just didn't fit with our community."

Maui County Council has considered an ordinance similar to the Kauai ban. Riki Hokama, then serving as Maui Council's chair, says he introduced the legislation at the request of constituents. The proposal would forbid stores of greater than 90,000 square feet of retail space if they either stocked more than 25,000 different products or devoted more than 20,000 square feet to groceries. That's language similar to other anti-big box proposals in Hawaii and on the Mainland.

While the issue remains alive, it is not at the top of the Council's agenda now, Hokama says, in part because of the weak economy.

"With the bad economy right now, everybody is looking for a bargain," Hokama says. "I hope we will still see value and support our local businesses, but people have to make tough choices."

A group called Save Maui Now is circulating a petition that says, "These stores are an economic disaster most places, but in a place like Maui, they are especially destructive to the economy, environment, infrastructure, and island way of life that makes Maui the paradise it is."

Hokama understands the dilemma of saving money vs. buying local. After all, he explains, he favors Maui-brand Roselani ice cream, but often picks it up at his local Big Box.

The Iwilei area of Honolulu, once solely an industrial and warehousing district, is now home to the largest concentration of adjacent big-box stores in Hawaii. It's also home to a series of small businesses – almost all of them restaurants and fast-food outlets – that feed off the traffic that big boxes attract.

Survivors and Feeders

While big-box stores have killed some local competitors, others have survived.

Locally owned City Mill and Hardware Hawaii stores, for instance, have held their own despite mega-competitors such as Lowe's and Home Depot.

Big boxes also sometimes act as magnets for small retailers who cluster around the mega-stores and feed off the traffic they generate. An entire retail neighborhood grew up around Costco after it opened in Salt Lake (now the site of a Target store). The same thing happened when Costco moved to Iwilei, where the satellites include Hawaiian Furniture and Lamp Co. and the fast-food restaurants Max's of Manila, Quiznos Sub and L&L Hawaiian Barbecue.

"It's a symbiotic relationship," says Mike Manning, who has been with Costco for 19 years and was eating lunch at L&L recently. "L&L shops at Costco, so it works for everybody. Small mom-and-pop markets do the vast majority of their shopping at Costco, so it seems to benefit everyone in the community."

Drawing shows the planned Target store in Kailua.     Illustration: Courtesy of Target

Targeted Suburb

Old-timers in Kailua still call it Holiday Mart. But the all-in-one department/grocery store with its eccentric mix of Japanese, Hawaiian and standard merchandise, most recently called Don Quijote, is no more.

The Japanese owners sold out to Mainland giant Target, which intends to open a 130,000-square-foot store – somewhat smaller than other Targets in the Islands – by the summer of 2012.

The prospect delights many residents and riles others, who fear their once-sleepy beachside community is about to be further upsized and over-retailed out of its identity.

"What Target is doing, with the complicity of (landowner) Kaneohe Ranch, is planning a store that is much larger than what the community itself needs," says Mollie Foti, a longtime resident and a leader of the Keep It Kailua group.

Various planning initiatives, including a sustainable communities plan for Windward Oahu (though never formally adopted by the City Council) designated Kailua as a residential, small-scale community. That plan, and a follow-on plan sponsored by Kaneohe Ranch, specifically rejected big boxes, Foti says.

"But Kaneohe Ranch turned around and spit on their own plan," she said.
All of this frustrates Mitch D'Olier, CEO of Kaneohe Ranch. "I understand the concerns," D'Olier says, "but this will not be much different from (Don Quijote)."

The Don Quijote outlet was a chain department store with a 90,000-square-foot footprint and outside ownership, in this case from Japan, D'Olier notes. The owners were uninterested in extending their lease or buying the land, and the run-down property has had few improvements in recent years. It is time for a change, he says.

Target promises to pump $40 million into its store, including at least $1 million in traffic improvements to Hahani Street. Hundreds of trees will be planted, the parking lot rebuilt with a permeable membrane that will allow groundwater to recirculate, and the architectural design will focus on Kailua's identity.

In addition, Target has already given money to many causes in the local community, including a recent grant of about $200,000 to help build a new library at Blanche Pope Elementary School in Waimanalo.

In contrast, D'Olier says, the owners of Don Quijote gave virtually nothing back to the community.
What about Target's impact on surrounding smaller retailers?

"Target will be a better neighbor for small business than someone like Costco," he says. "It will cause more cross-shopping. They are as much like a Macy's or Sears as they are like the big-box guys. For businesses in Kailua, it is way better to have Target in Kailua than far away."

But Foti and other critics say their concern is not specifically about protecting small local businesses. Rather, it is in keeping the personality of Kailua as a residential community. Target and stores like it will draw traffic from throughout the Windward side, putting more congestion into an already congested town.

"With a store that large, it has to draw traffic from Kaneohe, Waimanalo and Hawaii Kai," Foti says. "Our streets are impossible already. They are trying to put a size-11 foot into a size-9 shoe."

Sarah Bakken, the Arizona-based manager of communications for Target, says her company has gone out of its way to respond to community concerns. That's one reason the company downsized the Kailua store from original plans. She also says much of the additional space will go toward enclosing a loading dock as a consideration to neighboring apartments.

Bakken acknowledges Target's target audience goes beyond Kailua. "We are looking at surrounding communities to support our store." But Don Quijote did precisely the same thing, she says.

"It's the same market."

Drawing shows the planned Target store in Kailua.

What is a "BIG BOX?"

Big boxes are generally considered to be large, industrial-style buildings or stores of 20,000 square feet to 200,000 square feet.

Within that definition, the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism offers at least four categories:

Category killers: specialty stores offering a variety of goods in a particular category, such as Sports Authority, Office Depot or Toys 'R' Us.
Discount department stores: stores such as Walmart that offer a wide variety of merchandise at low prices and operate at a high sales volume.
Outlet stores: where manufacturers and department stores offer discounted items, such as at Oahu's Waikele Premium Outlets.
Warehouse clubs: Membership operations such as Costco and Sam's Club, which offer a wide variety of discounted items.

There are other retailers that are technically not big boxes but still dominate their markets. These include chains such as McDonald's or 7-Eleven, in which the large number of individual stores make up for the small size of each.

 

Kailua Neighborhood Board Meeting

Thursday, May 5th

7:00pm
Kailua District Park (Multi-Purpose Building)
21 S. Kainalu Drive


3-TALK meeting

Tuesday, April 12th

7:00pm

St. John Lutheran Church (1004 Kailua Road)

District 3’s City Council Member, Ikaika Anderson, will be holding his 3-TALK meeting.  These meetings allow anyone to personally ask questions, comment, voice concerns, etc. to our own City Council Member.  Our community needs to continue to raise questions and concerns to Ikaika about the future development of Kailua!!!

Future 3-talk meetings:

Tuesday, May 17
Waimanalo Public Library (41-1320 Kalanianaole Hwy.)

Tuesday, June 7
Kaneohe Community & Senior Center (45-613 Puohala Street)

Continued Call Out

Please E-mail or call Transportation Director (and related City officials) with a request for the City to complete a comprehensive traffic plan for Kailua prior to any major building permit being issued.  Your e-mail or call should be sooner, rather than later.

Copy from the following text, or refer to the attached information and write your own sentiment.  If you agree Kailua needs a  comprehensive traffic study and plan based on carrying capacities of our streets and intersections, please incorporate the first underlined phase:

As a city taxpayer and resident, I request that the City and County Department of Planning and Permitting defer any major permit for construction in Kailua until a comprehensive traffic study is completed.  The baseline study should be funded by the City’s Department of Transportation Services, and document current volume and projected future traffic volume and its impact upon the Kailua community from: Castle Medical Center to Kalaheo Avenue; from Keolu Drive to downtown Kailua; and from Mokapu Boulevard to downtown Kailua.

Justification:

Kailua town is essentially located on an island created by the marshes, streams and ocean that border Kailua.  One of eight bridges must be crossed to get to Kailua’s town center.  Increased traffic to Kailua from known proposed projects (Target projects 20% increase in traffic to their site; a future 153 unit condominium complex is pending on a neighboring parcel; traffic from the soon to be completed Whole Foods store and retail shops at Kaneohe Ranch’s “Phase III development”; and an anticipated increase of 2,000 military and dependents at Kaneohe Marine Corp Base Hawaii) will not be eased by adding a turn lane or stop light in front of the Target property.  It is incumbent upon our government agencies to conduct the planning function – not only the permitting function. The City has a responsibility to balance community infrastructure and function against private, for-profit enterprise.

INCLUDE YOUR NAME.

E-mail is very effective.  Cut and paste the above (with your name) and send to:

(complete list of email and phone numbers are listed in the "contacts" link on the right)

Wayne Yoshioka: City Transportation Director

wyoshioka@honolulu.gov
Mel Hirayama: Traffic Review Branch
mhirayama@honolulu.gov
David Tanoue: Department of Planning and Permitting (Director)
dtanoue@honolulu.gov
Peter Carlisle: Honolulu Mayor
mayor@honolulu.gov

Copy your elected representatives so they know what issues their constituents care about in Kailua: 

Ikaika Anderson:City Council Member, District 3 (Waimanalo, Kailua, and most of Kane'ohe)
ianderson@honolulu.gov
Please copy ALL councilmembers:  tberg@honolulu.gov ;  emartin@honolulu.gov ;  schang@honolulu.gov ; akobayashi@honolulu.gov ; tgabbard@honolulu.gov ; rcachola@honolulu.gov ; bharimoto@honolulu.gov ; ngarcia@honolulu.gov


Jill Tokuda: 24th Senatorial District (Kane'ohe - including KCAB; Kailua, Enchanted Lake)
sentokuda@Capitol.hawaii.gov
Pono Chong: 49th Representative District (Maunawili, Olomana, Enchanted Lake, Kāne'ohe)
repchong@Capitol.hawaii.gov
Cynthia Thielen: 50th Representative District (Kailua, Kāne'ohe Bay)
repthielen@Capitol.hawaii.gov
Chris Lee: 51st Representative District (Lanikai, Waimānalo)
repclee@Capitol.hawaii.gov

Please pass on to others.   We already live with the repercussions of bad planning in our City and town daily; having more inadequately planned development in Kailua will affect our daily lives.

traffic study event timeline

May 2010 - Target informed residents at community meeting Traffic Study would be submitted over the summer - NEVER HAPPENED

-- Six(6) months later  --

Nov. 20, 2010 - Target rep told community members (at Target's Open House, Kailua Elementary) their Traffic Study had been submitted -- UNTRUE

Dec. 14, 2010 - per DPP, no Traffic Study received yet from Target

Jan. 25, 2011 - per DPP, Traffic Study? - none received yet

Feb. 17, 2011 - still, no Traffic Study

March 15, 2011 - per DPP, a Draft Traffic Study received --  unresolved issues -- Draft returned to Target & their traffic consultant, with request to revise & resubmit

April 1, 2011 - City reviewing Traffic Study which still has traffic issues Target must address -- Target

Kailua Neighborhood Board Meeting

Thursday, April 7th
7:00pm
Kailua District Park (Multi-Purpose Building)
21 S. Kainalu Drive

City Department of Transporation Director, Wayne Yoshioka, WILL ATTEND our upcoming Kailua NB meeting to discuss TRAFFIC  ISSUES  IN  KAILUA!!

Great follow-up opportunity for 'community members' as well as our KNB who have for months now, requested a COMPREHENSIVE Traffic Impact Analysis for ALL of Kailua!  Without one, the stakes are extremely high that Kailua will face irreversible impairment in the future!

Please, we encourage you to attend the Kailua Neighborhood Board meeting and bring your traffic concerns and MORE!

Mahalo!

Keep It Kailua-letter & maps

 

 

Kailua Neighborhood Board Meeting

 Thursday, March 3rd

7:00pm

Kailua District Park (Multi-Purpose Building)

21 S. Kainalu Drive

We encourage you to attend this meeting!  We must continue to voice our concerns at these monthly meetings.  Add your name to the "Neighborhood Concerns" list, or email NB chair Chuck Prentiss: prentissc001@hawaii.rr.com

The White House-message

...so we ask, why Target?

-----------------------------
The White House Blog on Small Business
"President Obama is committed to helping small business succeed"

--- On Thu, 2/24/11, Austan Goolsbee, The White House info@messages.whitehouse.gov wrote:

Good Afternoon,

Did you know that small businesses are the backbone of our economy, creating two out of every three new jobs in America?

President Obama is committed to helping small businesses succeed by making America the best place in the world to do business. He has signed into law 17 new tax cuts for small businesses. He launched the National Wireless Initiative to help bring high-speed wireless Internet access to 98 percent of Americans. And he launched Startup America, an initiative to celebrate, inspire and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation.

It's also important to take the time to listen to folks on the ground about the challenges they face every day. That's why we went to Cleveland this week to talk directly with small business owners, and it's why your "Advise the Advisor" feedback is so important.

If we out-innovate, out-educate and out-build our global competitors, the future is ours to win. That's a challenge that we will tackle together, and I look forward to the work ahead.

Sincerely,

Austan Goolsbee
Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers

P.S.  To find out when the next "Advise the Advisor" opportunity is posted, sign up for the Daily Snapshot email: http://www.whitehouse.gove/daily-snapshot

----------------------------
--- On Fri, 2/25/11, Kailua Resident wrote:

Mr. Goolsbee,

I received your e-mail and video visit from President Obama regarding small businesses.  You may not be aware we who live in Kailua, O'ahu, Hawai'i are in a battle to save our Town from the extinction of small businesses.  Plans are in the works for Target, a big box store to build very soon.  The property was sold by Kaneohe Ranch Land, the largest  business properties landowner of Kailua.  I am so disappointed knowing it will be the end of some small "Mom and Pop" stores which gives our Town a uniqueness and individuality. We are becoming "Any Town U.S.A."  I know it's happening on the mainland too.  Someone is allowing the big box stores to rule the country(world).   Save our "Mom and Pop" stores!!! They are definitely the backbone of the world. Allow them to thrive and continue to be creative and keep the entrepreneurial spirit in us!  We don't need to keep the wealth only amongst  a few and the rest of us working for them.  In fact I would say that the majority of the  small businesses are happy with their earnings, that they don't expect to become another conglomerate or big box store.  Just give them the financial breaks to survive and take care
of their family.  There are big box stores in Hawai'i so it's not like we don't have a choice whether to shop there or not, just help us to keep our "Mom and Pop" stores too.

Mahalo for your time and consideration,
Helen T. W.

---------------------------

Additional links:

President Obama speaks -- Online Forum on Small Business (video):

 http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2011/02/23/president-obama-drops-online-forum-small-business?utm_source=email99&utm_medium=image&utm_campaign=advise

Here's the website:

 http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/02/16/advise-advisor-austan-goolsbee-and-small-business