Capital Video’s Springfield Porn Shop Repels Sought-After Businesses

Capital Video’s Springfield porn shop continues to be the WMass exemplar for secondary effects. In January we noted how the Springfield police have issues with drug sales and lewd activity around the premises. Now Valley Advocate blog Urban Compass reports that the shop repels businesses that developers are trying to bring to the area:

Developer Leon Charkoudian of 122 Chestnut and Birnie Building, LLC, and real estate broker Fred Rowe of Atlantic Realty Advisors, have been trying for some years to lease out an 11,000 square-foot space in the Birnie Building at 11 Pearl Street, at Apremont Triangle downtown. Their current vision is for a small- to medium-size neighborhood grocer, but they haven’t been able to find an occupant or a developer…

[Leon Charkoudian:] In 2000, Fred and I felt that it would not take too much effort, a little bit of government assistance, and we could spruce these buildings up, and make it the front door for the overall neighborhood, with coffee shops, specialty foods, vendors, restaurants, and above all, we wanted to put–to serve the neighborhood–a market here.

We went to every single national chain, mid-market chain, wholesalers, retailers, small shops, big shops, all around the Berkshires, out through Worcester and Boston, just talking to people. No one would take this. Some would get very excited: they would say, okay, okay. And then, of course, what they would do, as some pizza people have done that we’ve tried to attract from other places–they would walk the area, shop the area, and then I’d never hear. They wouldn’t return my calls.

Finally, in many cases, I would go and visit them again, and they didn’t want to see me. They’d kind of put their head down. When I forced them, they’d say, we don’t have anyone that’s interested at this time. We don’t want to do that now…

[Fred Rowe:] A lot of the neighborhood people are rightfully frustrated that not much has happened with the building. When we took it over, the significant problems with the tenancy in the building–the people who had been busted for dealing drugs out of one of the storefronts, and an illegal late-night social club on the second floor. We kind of cleaned all that up, and we replaced some of the tenants, but it remains mostly vacant throughout. We’re trying to retenant it with things that are really going to add to the neighborhood. Not the traditional things you see around–we’re trying to really reinvigorate it with some exciting stuff. The [potential grocery] market is really the key, we think, to the whole building. The people that come, the market operator–their issue is number one, the Video Expo [Amazing.net] across the street, and the crowd that you see around it…

See also:

Blaine, Washington Compels Existing Adult Business to Move or Shut
Community development director Terry Galvin: “This city is right on the edge of a growth spurt. Cities have windows of opportunity and this is it. We’ve got a problem in that the adult entertainment business acts as a kind of anti-gravity force.”