Canoes first, Canals later: a modest proposal
(Picture of lower Genesee river found here.)
Recently WXXI’s 1370 Connection program had Bob Smith interviewing someone about the whole “Broad Street Canal” project. Which the guest was promoting, and estimated a price tag of an elephant-gagging $100 million. And I thought the Ferry was expensive at over $30 million.
A caller called in, and suggested a more “baby step” oriented approach to city development, starting with a project like this: rent canoes for folks to use to paddle down the lower Genesee, from just beyond the falls to the mouth. Then have a boat taxi them (and the canoes) back up to the starting point. You have a fun activity that takes advantage of one of Rochester’s unique strengths, and probably a minimum of outlay to get it going. Get a bunch of cheap and innovative projects like that going around the city, and all of a sudden you’ve got a rich and vibrant social/commercial fabric that’s much more sustainable than these large infrastructure projects, with much less risk.Â
If I had time, and could remember the caller’s name, I’d suggest starting that canoe service as a small business. Local microlenders would probably jump at the chance. I’d just like to be able to DO something like that, especially if I look at that picture for too long.Â
Well said.
A couple of weeks ago, one of the rocwriters writers posted about the difficulties that one of his friends had trying to start a coop book store. There are many hoops, both financial and bureaucratic, that are daunting for someone who’s never started a business. Microlending coupled with business plan mentoring would be a great way to get more small business starts in Rochester.
You’re not kidding. I’m lucky to even know about microlending. I spent about 15 minutes googling Rochester microlending several different ways and came up with nothing that would apply to this scenario. I’ll bet if you asked enough folks in city government you’d eventually find someone who could point you in the right direction. It would be nice to have giant physical and web-based funnels that would direct entrepreneurs to the kind of mentoring you’re talking about. Maybe there is already, but I couldn’t find it.
Too bad this idea didn’t arrive before the fast ferry… it’s much more feasible and has a significantly better chance of working. Maybe I’ll run for city council on a “less ferries, more canoes” platform…
Keep in mind one of the barriers to this program would be the inevitable failure rate. The mortality rate for all small business is high - like 75% in a couple of years - so any public program would have to be sold as high risk. And, unlike the ferry, there would have to be decent oversight to be sure that people wouldn’t just take the microloans and run. It would be a good opportunity for some kind of partnership between the city/county and a charitable organization that would be able to tap current and retired businessmen as mentors.
We get any more detail for this proposal, and we’re dangerously close to forming a think tank. I’m not surprised at a high failure rate, since the economy/infrastructure is set up to support established corporations much more than entrepreneurs. But it may be somewhat lower than 75% . This USA Today article gives an analysis of biz failure rates, putting independent restaurants at ~60% failure in the first 3 years (still not great), but (as close as I can tell from their weird way of showing them), <40% “failure” for all small businesses in the first 3 years. The number of businesses failing thru bankruptcy is actually quite small, in the low single digits, more are actually due to the “I had no idea” syndrome where it’s successful but requires an overwhelming amount of time/work.
[...] Funny stuff. But a sober reminder that just because you spend a bajillion dollars on big-ticket civic development (*cough* Fast Ferry *cough* Ren Square *cough*), doesn’t mean it’s sustainable. How about spreading that around to micro-improve many different parts of the city? “Leaven in the loaf”, and all that. [...]