How's Business in Downtown Ramona?

How is business going in downtown Ramona?

In an interview on May 12, Executive Director of the Ramona Chamber of Commerce Craig Jung told Patch, “Listening to people, I hear there’s a subtle increase in business.”

Patch then tested Jung’s thesis on a sampling of downtown business owners, asking how business was going so far this year compared to last. Results proved mixed.

“Right now, overall, we’re up quite a bit,” said Dan Brown, owner of Ramona Sports Store & More at 1530 Main. But Brown quickly added that most of the increase was what he called “special orders,” outfitting orders “from schools and sports leagues.”

Walk-in business is down slightly from last year, Brown said, and he hasn’t really gotten back up to the level of 2006. Things have been essentially stagnant.

“I’m running 10 percent over last year,” reported Sandee Salvatore, owner of Old Town Ramona Antique Fair at 734 Main St. It was up 12 percent until the latest gas price increase, Salvatore added. Still, she said  it was an improvement over the 50 percent drop in business Salvatore said she saw in 2008 when the economy went down and gas prices started rising.

A problem for her and other antique stores, Salvatore said, is that “this is a fun money store.” In tough economic times, people watch their extraneous spending to make sure they have enough for necessities such as food, medicine and, increasingly, gas for their cars.

“I still have plenty of people coming in,” Salvatore said. “I’d just like to have to make change for a hundred dollar bill instead of a twenty.”

At Sun Valley Florist, a few doors down Main Street from Salvatore, owner Sandy Gillespie said, “We had a better Mother’s Day than last year." She added that prom week helped them do well. Gillespie said that even before these events, which are always boom periods for her shop, she thought business “seemed to be growing a little bit.”

At The UPS Store in the Stater Bros. Shopping Center in the 1600 block of Main, Manager Susan Wilson said business was “doing fine” and the same as the year before. Wilson, who said she’d been manager there for three years, also said she hadn’t seen any effects from the recession in the store.

On the other hand, Jeff Harris, owner of Country Tire & Auto at 2317 Main, was surprised to hear of any reported increase in business. He said things had been down for him since 2008. He cited the recession and increasing gas prices.

Harris said some people are wanting to tune their cars better to run more economically but this has been negated by people driving less to avoid paying more for gas.

“The price of tires skyrockets when gas goes up,” said Harris, who added that even he is watching how many car trips he is taking.

Michael Clack, owner of a furniture restoration business at 436 Main, said his business has been off for the past three years.

“The end of ’08 is when I really started feeling it, when the housing crisis hit.”

The recession has disrupted the normal cycles of a business he’s been in for 30 years, Clack said. For example, “usually in September it starts getting busy, when people start thinking about fixing up for the holidays. But that hasn’t happened in the last few years,” he said.

Clack said he thought there might be a very subtle increase going on, “but it’s hard to acknowledge that it’s there.”

While saying he often feels very discouraged, Clack added, “I wouldn’t keep doing this every month if I didn’t think it was going to get better. I enjoy what I do. You save things that have been in people’s families for a hundred years. It’s very gratifying.”

Meanwhile, Dan Parker, owner of Wrangler Dan's Mercantile, told Ramona Patch that he is closing his shop on Main Street. Parker told us earlier this year that people aren't spending money the way they used to. The store has sold furniture.