Commerce
Cranford has long been considered a center of commerce. The Cranford Business Park on the south side of town consists of a complex of office buildings housing a variety of major corporations and small businesses. Along North Avenue are a variety of buildings housing doctors and other businesses. Law offices predominate in small buildings around town. Banks are also extremely common throughout the town, which hosts at least half a dozen. Downtown Cranford is the main retail business district for the township. Consisting of a variety of small family owned businesses on both sides of the railroad tracks, there has been a debate in town over the direction of the downtown. With neighboring communities seeing downtown development and a focus on either recruiting chain store or upscale small stores, Cranford has been debating the issue. On the south side of town, the Centennial Avenue Business District is a small shopping district with a mix of neighborhood stores. There is a push to redevelop this business district.
The recent focus of downtown Cranford has been to recruit more restaurants in to the downtown and allow for a nightlife to flourish. Amongst the existing nightlife, Cranford holds a number of local restaurant/bars: The Office, The Riverside Inn, Cranford Hotel, The Kilkenny House, Ye Olde Rathskellar, among others. On the south side of the community, the Cranford Crossings redevelopment project features retail space, apartments, and a new parking deck. The Riverfront redevelopment project is proposed on South Avenue to bring more business and housing into downtown Cranford.
In the 1980s the downtown was renovated to take on a Victorian feel. This included the installation of new light fixtures and cobblestone sidewalks, along with decorative planters and benches. A Victorian street clock was installed in the center of town, allowing for the creation of a small pocket park in the center of the downtown. The clock park has become a hangout for teenagers who are walking to and from school.
In the 1980s, Cranford founded the first special improvement district in New Jersey, which allows for the downtown district to have a special tax on building and business owners for downtown development and marketing which is managed by the Cranford Downtown Management Corporation. The DMC has used its budget for development projects, to recruit new businesses and to market shopping in Cranford. Various downtown sales and street fairs are administered by the DMC. The DMC is governed by a Board of Directors consisting of business owners and residents, which is appointed by the Township Committee. The DMC Board appoints a DMC Director, who runs the day-to-day operations of the corporation.
Read more about this topic: Cranford, New Jersey
Famous quotes containing the word commerce:
“Honour sinks where commerce long prevails.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)
“Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)
“Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, coöperate with, and do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)