The Death of Downtown

— पांच हजार पांच सौ चार — Big news at work yesterday: at the end of January, we are closing the Downtown store. To say I have wildly mixed feelings about this announcement is an understatement. Let's go through them all! First, I am fascinated by the deeply corporatized precision with which this announcement was rolled out. So far as I can tell, anyone not on the Leadership Team (LT: CEO, CFO and department heads) did not know the announcement was coming at the time it was coming—which, in an interal All Store & Office email, came yesterday afternoon, literally minutes before we had a scheduled Merchandising all-department meeting. This is the timeline: Wednesday, August 1 1:55 pm: All Store & Office Staff email from Krish, the CEO. 2:00 pm: Merchandising Department meeting in "The Orchard," the 14-seat conference room right next to the front desk, which overlooks a view of Elliott Bay beyond the railroad tracks and Myrtle Edwards Park. I brought my laptop to the meeting and was literally trying to finish reading Krish's email when it started. 2:01 pm: Article in the Seattle Times is posted online: PCC to close its downtown Seattle store due to poor sales. We were only a few minutes into the meeting when I googled "PCC downtown closing" to see if this was already being shared by public media—and, indeed, it was. I only figured out after the meeting that it had been posted literally right when the meeting started, and literally minutes after Krish's email went out. 2:17 pm: During the meeting, I send a text to Gabby, who is in Mexico on vacation this week, to inform her of the news in case she didn't already hear—she had said she was bringing her work laptop but did not plan to opening it unless something major came up, but we could text her if we needed to get ahold of her. I just figured she'd want to know, and she was indeed unaware. 2:20(ish) pm: The Merchandising meeting adjourns. Our new VP of Merchandising, Dave, facilitated the department meeting for the first time—and he told us this topic was the only thing on the agenda. He opened up for questions, and two key things stand out in my memory: it's been stated that all staff at Downtown will have the opportunity to transfer to other stores, and the quite logical question was posed as to how other stores will absorb Downtown's management team; the response was fairly vague. And Cathryn asked if the new Madison Valley store was still on track to be built and opened and we were assured that not only yes, Madison Valley is still going forward, but none of the other stores are facing anything remotely like the fate of the Downtown store. But then, with this being the only topic on the agenda and no more questions, we ended only about twenty minutes in. 2:22 pm: I receive the Member email announcing the impending closure. I should note, though, that former PCC employee but still-current member Jill posted a comment on my Instagram post about this that the timestamp on her email member alert was 2:05. 2:26 pm: After forwarding Krish's email to my Gmail account, I then pass it on to both Scott O and Tracy P. We exchange a few emails about how this news is ultimately not that surprising, given the stuly sluggish post-pandemic Downtown neighborhood recovery. 2:50(ish) pm: Justine, Senior Director of Merchandising and who has been acting as co-VP with Tracy M for several months until Dave was finally hired, came by my desk just to "check in," because, as she put it, "I know you love your Downtown." This was not necessary but I deeply appreciate it; it was reminiscent of when she came to check in with me after Kibby was let go in early 2020. We even commiserated a bit about my opinon that PCC opened way too many stores too quickly in recent years and I am super glad we seem to be pressing the brakes on that—and, selfishly, even though it's a genuine bummer that Downtown will close, once Madison Valley opens, that means we'll then have the exact same number of stores as we do now, and I am all good with that. Side note: Justine is one of the few people left around here with a history at PCC dating many years before mine (although she did leave for some years in the middle of it), and is thus one of the few people who can access the sensibilites of PCC both pre- and post-growth explosion. And these are very different things: I noted that "We added middle management, which you exist in." She raised her hand and said, "Guilty!" 5:33 pm: Dave sends a short, follow-up email to roughly 40 vendor contacts, in which he writes, in part, The store will be open until the end of January, and we plan to offer a full shopping experience for the holidays. The merchandising team will be working with you directly on the plan for this store as we approach the closure date. All operations at our other 15 locations will continue as normal. In the meantime, feel free to reach out with any questions. He also provides a link to the online press release—which, incidentally, I could not find during the Merchandising meeting, but has definitely been up since at least yesterday evening. In any case, announcements were made internally, in department meetings, in member communications and in public media—all literally within minutes of each other. That kind of coordination indicates that the rollout of this information has to have been planned for a while—I would guess at least a week, if not more. I asked Noah after the meeting if he knew about this before and he chuckled and said, "No!" I later asked Justine the same thing, when she came by my desk, and she admitted she knew before the announcement itself, but had not known for very long—in spite of having been privy to conversations leading up to it in recent months. She didn't get more specific about it than that. There's just something about this level of coordination that, I don't know, sort of doesn't fully sit right with me. It makes me feel like the entire PCC staff are just as much subject to marketing tactics as the customers are—I won't make the leap to call it propaganda, but it's within that orbit—with this chasm between upper leadership and the rest of us, in terms of awareness. To be fair, I get the need and desire to be careful about sensitive information and when it's shared. But also, it's just more fodder for the perception that PCC has "gone corporate," whether that's strictly true or not. Honestly it's kind of amazing how little my specific job has been affected by all these changes over the years. Maybe I should knock on wood. The worst of it has just been having to contend with more than double the number of store contacts as when I started, which is definitely more of a challenge than we used to be. I need to get back to Krish's internal email now, because it touched on something the press and the member communication did not: weighing options in regards to our office space. I love this office space so much, every time that comes up, it's almost triggering for me. I don't really care how many store staff look at our beautiful office and resent this notion that we're all up here in an ivory tower. But, I get that the fact that such staff perception exists is why this comes up. Krish wrote, in part: Second, I have shared for some time now that our co-op office space does not reflect our values, or efficiently provide what we need in a post-pandemic workplace. And unfortunately, simply abandoning our office lease (which was signed many years ago and is expiring in a couple of years) does not relieve us of the contractual obligation to continue to pay rent on the space. This is true for all our lease agreements. However, we are actively working with all our landlords to find cost savings within the constraints of our legally binding obligations. This is, obviously, deliberately vague. We had an All Staff Town Hall this morning at 10:00, again with only the Downtown closure on the agenda, and the office came up only briefly. I did ask when the current lease is actually ending, because I could remember being told when we moved in 2016 that it was "about ten years" but had not yet gotten a specific year-end date. Well, now I've got one. I won't get into detail about the Town Hall otherwise because it started with us being asked not to discuss what we talk about there publicly. I will say this: some of the store staff comments and questions were a little wild, and indicative of how many people at stores have no real idea how working at the office works, from top (CEO) to bottom (e.g. me). In any event, if we do indeed wind up moving in a couple of years, I just keep telling myself that even if we go into a smaller space somewhere else, it's quite possible that I'll still like the space and the location even better. You never know! — पांच हजार पांच सौ चार — — पांच हजार पांच सौ चार — Shortly after the Town Hall ended, Justine came by my desk, yet again (just like she did after the Merchandising meeting yesterday) to check in, and ask how I thought it went. I thought it went pretty well actually, all things considered—it could have been way worse, anyway. One thing I think we need to work to get more people to understand is that a huge number of people currently making major decision for the co-op were not among the group making the same kinds of decisions in the middle of the last decade, decisions that are now affecting us in ways that could not be anticipated. Currently leadership, while like anyone are people who are imperfect, cannot be blamed for that in particular. Justine chatted with me for a while. I asked her if I was remembering right, and she said I was, that the closure of the Ravenna store in 2001 (the year before I was hired) was indeed the last time we permanently closed a store to a neighborhood—no temporary closure (like West Seattle), no replacement store opening right after the closure (like Seward Park making way for Columbia City, or the recently opened new Kirkland location). The only thing that made Ravenna much more different was that it was, at the time, our oldest continuously operating store, so it had been open for decades. What's happening with Downtown now is much more akin to the Everett store we had open in Everett, from only 1992 to 1995. Thas was way before my time—I was a teenager living in Spokane—but, I did learn today, Justine worked as a Grocery Coordinator there. She also had a child at that time and was allowed to bring the baby to work and keep the child in a playpen behind the bulk bins. Wow. — पांच हजार पांच सौ चार — In completely unrelated news, we had our Action Movie Night at the Braeburn last night, with seven in attendance this week: Tony, Ben, Ryan (whose pick it was), Derek, Sean, Shobhit, and myself. As a guy who has now chosen a movie seven times, Ryan has a wildly spotty record for his choices. They have ranged from brilliant (Triangle of Sadness) to seriously bad (Mad Heidi). He told us last night his basic criteria most times is just to find something he can assume the group has not seen. Considering I see almost everything actually worth seeing, this does result in a wild crapshoot. His approach this time around was to bring four old bargain bin DVDs he once bought at a Target or Wal-Mart or someplace like that. He systematically eliminated three of them in what appeared to be arbitrary ways, and two of them I was relieved not to have to sit through. After what we did sit through, I really wish he would have chosen Army of Darkness—I saw that many years ago, but I know that at the very least it's entertaining. The movie he chose was a 1994 Animal House ripoff starring David Spade and John Favreau (as a dimwit with dreadlocks!) called PCU. This movie's runtime is 79 minutes, which was the only redeeming quality about it—a comedy that short is guaranteed to be bad. (Stretch it at least to ninety minutes, people. What do you think this is, a 1950s Disney animated feature?) And oh my god, it was awful. I wrote my Letterboxd review, where I have it one-half star, before the film even ended: Why couldn’t I have spent 79 minutes having my fingernails pulled out with pliers instead? — पांच हजार पांच सौ चार — [posted 12:32 pm]