Word of Mouth
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Question No. 8 in the second tourism poll states: Downtown is currently dominated by cruise tourism and related commercial activities between May and September. In the remaining months, many shops are closed. How should Juneau deal with this area?
My gosh folks, what do you mean "How should Juneau deal with this area?" One of the suggestions is to set standards for appearance of closed shops to eliminate the boarded-up look in the "off season." Let me suggest a solution. If you want commercial activity to come back downtown, the city, or "Juneau" has to do two things:
1. Provide convenient parking throughout the downtown area.
2. Close down the Nugget Mall, the Mendenhall Mall, Fred Meyer, Kmart and Costco.
We, the residents of Juneau voted years ago to close up many of the venerable downtown shops by not shopping there anymore. We said we preferred the "big box" stores and the malls over the downtown area. It is that simple.
Dave Fremming