After a recent visit to our cabin down by Schroeder, I decided to drive back home by our old cabin in Aitkin, Minnesota. Aitkin used to be a small, warm community with a vibrant, personalized downtown with a great old hardware store that had been in the same family for years.
On the south end of town, there has developed a cluster of larger retailers that started with a Pamida (now Shopko) that caused the hardware store to eventually close in downtown as well as a small market.
The cluster is what one first sees when driving towards Aitkin from the south on Highway 169. Needless to say, while it may feature some lower priced goods, it ain’t quaint.
And, with the larger retailers situated on the south edge of town, there isn’t as much reason to spend time with the few merchants left downtown.
The Dollar Store proposed for Grand Marais by itself may not be that big a threat to our village of Grand Marais, but it’s a start down a slippery slope to just another small town that is ringed with large, cookie cutter retailers and a dying downtown. Look to other towns such as those on the Range and you see the same impact of larger retailers out on the highway bypasses on what were once thriving downtowns filled with local merchants; they aren’t quaint any more.
Steven M. Lukas Ed.D., CPA
Minneapolis/Schroeder
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