Economic reality in Montgomery County keeps biting, keeps asking for a clean slate of policies. Unfortunately for MoCo and its taxpayers, County Executive Marc Elrich is a 37 year politician incapable of changing course.
The latest data sets about retail and commercial vacancies in the County are out (10/23/2023 is the report date per screen shot below), put together by the Montgomery Planning Commission and presented to the “Econ Committee” of the Montgomery County Council:
Here is a bare economic truth, laid out on page three. Since Q2, 2018, MoCo has seen a 78.1% increase in its Retail Market Vacancy Rate:
Total buildings housing retail space appears to be utterly stagnant, if this report / survey is to be believed. This means more empty storefronts, more urban and suburban blight… less jobs, less creative market energy. All utterly predictable under faux-socialist Marc Elrich.
The report, on page six, tries to provide (some) spin for what is going with retail in the country more broadly:
And while some of this might be true nationally, clearly the last point isn’t – at least for the County. MoCo doesn’t have lower vacancies driven by “lower overall supply” – it has higher vacancies then five years ago and a seemingly stagnant supply of retail business space.
Marc Elrich was elected as Montgomery County Executive on Nov. 6, 2018. He has now been the County’s chief exec for basically five years and the County continues to trend down in areas like economy, crime, public safety and more.
On page 30, the Planning Commission puts forth these “reasons” as to why Montgomery County could lose its “diverse retailers”:
“Increased costs of doing business” – also known as burdensome County taxes, fees, fines, labor laws and regulations. Yes, if you increase the costs of doing business and starting one… guess what — small “diverse retailers” will continue to go elsewhere, move out, or just forget about opening a storefront in MoCo. This is Econ 101 type stuff.
Maryland is already a bottom-5 state for business tax climate per the Tax Foundation. More to come on that in a future post.
