Grab a latte to go with this doomsday theory.
Numerous gas stations, banks, etc. fill our area at an increasing rate. One of the most ever-present and easily recognized of all retailers, Starbucks, seems to be the last thing to come to the Clarkston area. The coffee retailer has been known to infiltrate street corner after corner with their overpriced (yet delicious) caffeine rushes in larger areas. But in this area, where we’ve seen the recent explosion of the Sashabaw Road corridor, the mega giant brand had yet to leave a Clarkston footprint.
Will Starbucks fit in though?
Clarkstonites surely have developed their own coffee-drinking patterns long before Caribou Coffee set up shop. And now McDonald’s is attempting to get into the act with their own line of specialty coffees.
I would figure they would cost less and you won’t have to wade through a sea of smugness to get to the counter either. And when was the last time you saw a tip jar at McDonald’s?
Aside from the prices and the long-established coffee purchasing patterns, the traffic has to be another reason to avoid Starbucks. That area of Dixie Highway is no picnic during daylight hours.
What I will say in Starbucks? defense, is that the new location will bring jobs. The destruction of the previous building and subsequent reconstruction also gave somebody work.
The sudden ‘need? for drug stores on every corner got my wheels spinning about Starbucks, which seemed like the only retailer Clarkston didn’t have, is the emergence of drug stores.
As a child, we had Arbor (now CVS) and Perry (now Rite Aid). And then came Walgreens. Three drug stores within a half-mile of each other. Is that really needed? On Clarkston Road at Sashabaw, I see that all of the trees cleared out across the street from the ‘new? 7-Eleven is a Rite Aid. Across the intersection is more ongoing construction.
I don’t know what it’s slated to house, but I’m certain it won’t be the first of anything to the area. And down at the other end of Sashabaw at Maybee, at the site of the former Clarkston Christian Association, a new building. I wonder what’s going there?
Sure, competition is supposed to be a benefit for the consumer (right?), but aren’t they all kind of the same? So what is the difference?
We surely haven’t seen the last of the incoming retailers as ‘progress? continues north on Dixie Highway. That stretch is a happening spot and it seems that will continue until there are at least a couple drug stores in the area.
Shopping habits are routine based and I just wonder as these places come into play, how will they all survive? Someday, isn’t one of them going to have to lose the competition, leaving us with an empty building?
Having five of any store at your disposal is cool now, but what about twenty years from now when there are barricaded buildings. Wouldn’t it be a lot better to have those trees there? Likely there are several readers who would much prefer trees to blacktop parking lots, but the buildup continues. After the dust settles, when will the implosion begin?