With Blair’s closing, is downtown Macon still a good place for businesses?

Blair’s Discount Furniture is closing its doors after more than 45 years of serving the Macon community while witnessing the renaissance of downtown Macon.

The beginning of the renaissance has seen an increase in the amount of restaurants and entertainment venues along with an expanding number of loft apartments.

So with all of this happening, is downtown Macon still a viable place for traditional retailers?

Owner Diana Blair said while many people are moving downtown with the restaurants, entertainment and new shops available, she said it was time for her to close the store.

“It’s kind of bittersweet closing, but it’s just time for us to ... do something else,” she said.

In 1977, Blair’s Discount Furniture made its venture into downtown Macon at 401 Cherry St. with around five other stores across the city. Owners Diana and Bryan Blair consolidated into one store at 418 Third St., its current location, in 1982.

“We appreciate our customers over the years,” Diana Blair said. “They’ve been good to us, and we’ve tried to be good to our customers. We’ve given them good prices, so we appreciate Macon.”

The store has seen four generations of customers, and Blair said they made the decision to venture into downtown Macon although many retailers were leaving to go to the Macon Mall, which opened in 1975.

“I’m just a downtown person,” Blair said. “They’re the nucleus of the city, and the things that are going on now in downtown Macon are very exciting.”

Josh Rogers, president and CEO of NewTown Macon, said a natural shift from entertainment venues to apartments to more retailers is happening in Macon.

“We had to have the residents before we could get more retailers,” Rogers said. “The retail that’s coming online is different from the legacy retailers who’ve been here for a long time.”

‘Retail follows rooftops’

Retail is one of the last aspects to revitalize a downtown area followed by a strong office market, according to a report by The Brookings Institution.

After the entertainment industry is established downtown, an emphasis on residential space can be established to encourage an increase in the downtown population, according to the report.

Rogers said “retail follows rooftops” meaning more retail stores will open once there are more people to shop there, which is the reason NewTown Macon has focused efforts on loft apartments in downtown Macon.

In addition to more apartments, Rogers said NewTown Macon wants to help increase the amount of hotels to get more people in downtown Macon, including the 94-room hotel in the Willie C. Hill annex building.

Heatherly Wakefield, manager of the thrift store Wear, said she loves being in downtown Macon, but she would like to see more retail stores open.

“Whenever I see a retail shop close downtown, it feels … it’s like it’s more of a struggle for the existing retail shops because we’re more spread out,” she said. “It’s hard to encourage out-of-towners to kind of walk around when… there’s only like one shop per block.”

Wakefield would like to see a more focused effort to promote shopping downtown, such as events like the MAC Party, which introduced Mercer, Wesleyan and Middle Georgia State students to downtown Macon.

“I would like to see more retail is what it boils down to because I think that’ll help generate the foot traffic, and it’ll get people to explore all of the unique qualities that downtown has to offer,” she said.

Is downtown Macon still viable?

Although Rogers said he was sad to see Blair’s Discount Furniture closing, downtown Macon is still a viable place to do business.

“The Blair family’s been an anchor tenant for downtown through some of its toughest years,” he said. “I’m grateful that they’ve stayed downtown as long as they did. I’m sorry to see them close, but the retail environment nationally is challenging and changing very quickly.”

NewTown Macon keeps track of the net occupancy of storefronts in downtown Macon on a monthly basis, Rogers said.

In 2012, 52% of storefronts were filled while 74% are occupied today. Rogers said with the construction planned, 80% of storefronts will be filled in the next year.

Although more storefronts are occupied in downtown Macon, some retailers are still facing challenges with the changing market.

“I think retailers are experiencing an evolution in how we do business, and a lot of that is brought on by technology, so I think that presents a challenge, but that also presents an opportunity,” said Thomas Beusse, the executive director of the Georgia Retail Association.

Retailers that find success in downtown areas are boutique-style stores that offer unique items people can’t find anywhere else, Beusse said.

“There’s no question that Georgia’s retail industry is thriving,” Beusse said. “We are evolving to meet consumer demands.”

Rogers said the closing of Blair’s Discount Furniture relates more to national trends of the types of retail stores that will be successful in a downtown area, such as Per Diem Market and Ocmulgee Outfitters.

“The retail I think that is poised to survive and is still happening in person really favors downtown. People like going to individual, family-operated, locally-owned shops, and that’s what you’re seeing pop up downtown,” Rogers said.