

"It's a real entrepreneurial city," she said. Smith said she feels protective of Elkhart and its image. Several years ago she downsized her shop from more than 4,000 square feet to a cozy 1,200. Smith has survived in retail by being financially conservative - she doesn't have any loans to repay and has cut hours for her two employees, she said. "We're just in a real reality-check area right now.
The print shop elkhart indiana full#
"I have a store that is full of wonderful things, but nothing anybody needs," Smith, owner of The Picture Show for 27 years, said with a tense laugh.

Smith saw traffic at her gift shop start dropping off at the end of 2007. "They've already bailed out the banks I don't know why the banks aren't lending money or offering the assistance that most businesses run with." "I think that the government and the banks are the biggest problem, because we have checks and balances to make sure what happened didn't happen, and obviously it didn't work," she said. These are projects we will have to do," Moore said.īut gift shop owner Joanie Smith said she thinks government programs are no solution. These are not pie-in-the-sky items they're not pork. "We have 16 shovel-ready projects ready to go. Watch what Elkhart's mayor says about the president's visit » "It's jobs, jobs, jobs," Moore told CNN's "American Morning" on Tuesday. The Democrat supports the stimulus plan Obama was touting in his town Monday because it will get residents to work quickly. He said people need jobs so they have money to spend and support industries such as RVs. When that occurs, they start buying things, which creates more jobs, which then starts the cycle back up again."Įlkhart Mayor Dick Moore echoes that view. Even if you reduce the tax burden to those people, they still need to have some sort of income. "Unfortunately, you still have to have a job to have relief from the tax burden, and a lot of these people are behind in house payments and, quite frankly, it's a vicious cycle: You don't have a job, you can't make your house payment, you're not out buying anything. People in Elkhart who were interviewed said they don't have much confidence in the government's ability to resolve the crisis, though Dunlop said he thinks tax relief would help some.
The print shop elkhart indiana free#
"If banks can free up a little bit of credit so that people can buy products and get people back to work, that would be good for this area." "Unfortunately, when you drop a ton of money to pay billion-dollar bonuses on the East Coast, it kind of sucks on the Midwest," said Dunlop, president of J.A. Robert Dunlop runs a different kind of business, but he agrees with Sell. "I don't personally see how spending the amount of money talking about spending is going to stimulate the economy." "People won't buy them because they're too scared," she said. Take, for example, recreational vehicles, one of the town's knotted lifelines: Sell said she knows plenty of people willing to purchase RVs, but they can't without a bank loan. Small businesses as well as individuals need credit - not government spending - to keep the economy churning, she said. The banks, which started the mess, have already been bailed out, she said, but "I'm not seeing them loosening their purse strings." Sell said she isn't hopeful that any government plan will kick-start commerce in Elkhart or elsewhere. The company has high overhead and a "considerable" high-interest loan, and credit continues to be a problem, she said. WSBT-TV: Laid-off workers turn out to hear Obama.
