My Backyard

The next time you google my backyard to go to our web site please try the search box. Any thing and every thing we have posted there is easy to find. Type in the name of your town or your high school or an elected official and if we covered it or them it is all there for you to read. Examples could be Swansea, Bishop Feehan, and Scott Brown. The search box is the answer.

Our web audience is growing. Next year, our goal is to get over a million hits on the sites. Our two web sites, All Pawtucket and My Backyard had over seven hundred thousand hits in 2008. Those numbers were generated by unique visitors and do not include all the robot hits that companies like Google use to survey the site and to place appropriate advertising.

On the print side of My Backyard, our demographic and geographic footprint is growing.

We are seeing increased readership in North Providence, Lincoln, Medfield and Warwick. Our traditional distribution from Wrentham to Swansea and all the towns and cities in between remains strong in readership, editorial content, and advertising. That is a good thing, and we owe it all to you our faithful readers.

If what I read in The Providence Journal is true, and I believe it to be true, eleven cities and towns in Connecticut will be without a local newspaper on January 16, 2009. The papers are for sale and if no buyer comes forward the corporate owners plan to shutter the doors and windows. The Bristol Press which has published since 1876 is one of the papers slated to stop the presses. Prognosticators are inclined to think Boston will become a one newspaper town in 2009. They say The Herald will be gone.

The person with an idea that will occupy the shuttered big box stores on Route 1 should make the plan known now. We will all be thankful. There are some spaces that have not yet found an initial occupant. I am obviously most aware of this problem here in the neighborhood, but I am certain the empty store phenomenon is occurring throughout the region. I do have a proposal for Emerald Square if it should be closed.

I think it could be converted to a gated community. People could live there on the upper floors. The lowest floor could remain retail and restaurants. I do not know about the residential mix. It could be an over 55 community. It could be a mix of young singles and parents with children. There seems there would be space for an elementary school, a community health club and garden. There is adequate covered parking. Security would be easy to organize. Making the entire complex a wireless zone could be easily realized. Best of all, the property would continue to be profitable for the town’s tax base.

In this economy, the cities and towns are looking to the states for economic relief. The states are looking to the federal resources for economic relief. I do not see how relief is imminent. Just deciding who or what gets help is a huge task and getting the money there intact, to where it will do the most good, is another issue. I do know that part of the answer is to find people who can build things in America, to encourage and invest in them and watch the economy prosper.

Until next time.