Meridian music shop has mojo

Neighborhood store Mojo Music Discount and its music school, Mojo School of Music, have successfully expanded despite the tough economy.

Among the empty storefronts peppering the area’s commercial core, one business in the Cornwall Park neighborhood has managed to thrive — and expand.
Mojo Music Discount has extended some of its store operations, as well as its Mojo School of Music, into a building a few blocks up Meridian Street from the current store. The final stages of the move finished about a week ago, said Mojo Music founder and owner Doug Suther, and business is slowly starting to pick up.
“I think the profits will start appearing down the road a piece, but we’re starting to get pretty good cash flow out of there,” Suther said. “One step at a time.”
Building the next generation of music lovers
Manager Michael Roe credited the store’s music school for much of its success.
“[Mojo School of Music] is a key part of what we do at Mojo because it helps to train and encourage the next generation of musicians to love and appreciate music,” Roe said.
The school has 10 to 12 instructors who teach everything from guitar to songwriting to hand-drumming. Beyond physically expanding, Mojo School of Music has also acquired a new teacher in the past month, and with him, about 75 new students.
Suther said programs like Mojo’s often help supplement school music programs, which may not provide the individual attention a student needs to master an instrument.
“If you have kids and you realize that they’re in a school band program and they’ve got 40, 45 kids sitting around them, and on instructor trying to teach them all how to play a different instrument, it’s pretty tough for the kid to get all the education he needs to really be good on that instrument,” Suther said. “As a school of music and as a music store, we provide that service.”
Private instruction can also help students if their music time at school has suffered due to the economy, Roe said.
“With all the cutbacks in local school music programs,” Roe said, “we feel that it is important to help music students and provide the tools they need to continue to grow musically.”
Mojo doesn’t exclusively teach youths, though; its programs are for people of any age and any skill level. The school offers summer workshops for community members, culminating in an annual showcase in which students have a chance to show off their newly acquired talents.
A symbiotic relationship
Instructor Bob McDonald will facilitate a classical guitar ensemble this summer at the school. He said the store and the school have a symbiotic relationship, in that each helps the other grow.
“The more you know musically,” McDonald said, “the more you thirst for.”
McDonald has been teaching at Mojo for five and a half years and has 54 students who are between 5 and 85 years old. He teaches styles of guitar-playing ranging from classical to punk to metal.
“It’s all about getting students to unlock their personal expression and passion for music and what they are invigorated by,” McDonald said. “That’s when music becomes alive.”
Adapting to a changing economy
The new space houses all the store’s instrument repairs and rentals and a studio for some of the music school’s lessons. The store is now primarily used for instrument sales.
Suther said another way the store was able to weather the recession is by changing its inventory to remain accessible to customers.
“It got real tight there for a while, so Mike and I sat down and we figured out a strategy that would make up for that lost revenue that wasn’t coming in,” Suther said. “We decided to change the structure of the inventory a little bit: less high-end items, and more items suited for student use. That’s proven to be real good. We’ve kind of adapted our inventory to meet the current needs of store.”
Forty years old and still growing
Suther opened Mojo Music in 1971 in Fairhaven, eventually relocating downtown and farther up Meridian before settling into its current location in the Fountain District 12 years ago. Music lessons have always been a part of the business, and are still helping it thrive today.
“I’m going to be celebrating my 40th year in business in Bellingham with Mojo Music in December of this year. I can’t even believe it when I say it,” Suther said. “I founded it myself. I was 21 years old and came up to Bellingham and opened up on a wing and a prayer.”
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Other roads slated for repaving are near Cornwall Park neighborhood

The section of Meridian Street between Birchwood Avenue and Interstate 5 is not the only road whose neighbors could be disturbed by night noise this summer. Three other roads are slated for repaving, and each is just outside the Cornwall Park neighborhood.
The section of Woburn Street between Barkley Boulevard and Sunset Drive (just east of the Cornwall Park neighborhood) and the section of Kellogg Road between Meridian Street and Cordata Parkway (just north of the neighborhood) will also be repaved over the course of eight nights in August.
The stretch of Bakerview Road between Deemer Road and Irongate Road (just north of the Cornwall Park neighborhood) will be repaved in June and will take ten nights to complete.
Repaving will occur between 7 p.m. and 5 a.m. on planned work nights. All three repaving projects are exempt from usual nighttime noise restrictions, which affect the hours between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Links

Read my original story on this issue and how it will affect hotels on Meridian Street

Noise Variance Request: Letter to the City Council from Granite Construction requesting exemption from noise restrictions — maps of the areas slated for repaving are on the last few pages of these documents

City of Bellingham Public Works department

Bellingham Municipal Code — BMC 10.24.120 (item 4 limits construction noise)

Hotels brace for night repaving in busy summer season

Night repaving of Meridian Street, scheduled for August, could disturb hotel guests and hurt business during the busiest season of the year.

Employees at hotels along a stretch of Meridian Street slated for night repaving are bracing for the project’s impact on their business and on their guests.
The Bellingham City Council voted 7-0 Monday to allow repaving of Meridian Street between Birchwood Avenue and Interstate 5, along with several other sections of road throughout the city.
The repaving will occur only between 7 p.m. and 5 a.m., according to a letter from Rick Niebruegge, project manager for Granite Construction, the company doing the repaving. The Meridian Street work is expected to last eight days, starting in August.
Niebruegge wrote to the city that doing the work at night would shorten the length of the project and reduce its impact on traffic and on homeowners.
The areas that will be repaved are mainly commercial or industrial, so there aren’t many homeowners who could be impacted. The section of Meridian Street slated for repaving does not have homes directly along it; Bellingham Golf and Country Club stretches along one side of the street and commercial buildings, including two hotels, are on the other.
Night noise excused
Employees of these hotels say they worry the project could hurt their businesses.
“[A quiet room] is the main thing that people ask for, especially being right next to the freeway,” said Alexis Jones, a front desk clerk at EconoLodge Inn and Suites on Meridian Street next to Interstate 5.
Jones said potential guests, who already need reassurance about noise at a hotel near the freeway, could be wary of staying at a hotel that is also right next to nighttime road work.
“It’s already busy,” she said. “You have to tell people it does quiet down at night, and that does throw that whole theory out the window.”
In its summary statement to the City Council Monday, Granite Construction asked to be excused from following the section of the Bellingham Municipal Code that restricts construction noise between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. The request was granted when the repaving project was approved.
Potential for complaints
Val Park, a front-desk employee at Rodeway Inn, said he anticipates guests complaining about the noise.
“If it’s loud, that’s going to piss off a lot of people here,” Park said.
Noise concerns aside, Park said the repaving work could mean people won’t stop in at the hotel in the first place, even if the work is done at night.
“There’s still a lot of walk-in guests during the night,” Park said. “People are going to think it’s inconvenient to stay here as opposed to motels down on Samish [Way].”
Park said August is one of the hotel’s busiest seasons.
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Chowing down for charity

Two Cornwall Park-area businesses benefited from benefiting Maple Alley Inn for the 10th annual Dine Out.

Thanks to Diamond Jim’s Grill’s recent move to the Fountain District, Cornwall Park residents had two options to “Dine Out” in their neighborhood Tuesday.
Dine Out is an annual event organized by the Opportunity Council to benefit its Maple Alley Inn program, which serves hot, nutritional meals to people in need. Participating restaurants donate 20 percent of their profits from the day to Maple Alley Inn.
Cascade Pizza Inn, the other Cornwall Park neighborhood restaurant participating, has been involved with “Dine Out” every year since it began a decade ago.
Giving back can be good for business
This year, 40 restaurants participated in Dine Out. Most of those are part of a core group that participates every year, said Opportunity Council Executive Director Dave Finet.
Finet said he thinks restaurant owners choose to be part of Dine Out because they like to be able to show that they are socially responsible.
Sheri Emerson, director of communications for the Opportunity Council, agreed. She said the Opportunity Council conducts a survey of all the participating restaurants’ owners, and they often say Dine Out is a great way for them to give back to the community.
“Their staff and their patrons really appreciate being able to participate in this event,” Emerson said. “Also, a lot of them have told us it’s just good for the restaurant industry in general. [Participating restaurants] will get anywhere from 20 to, sometimes, 50 percent more business during Dine Out.”
Because 20 percent of the day’s profits go to Maple Alley Inn, Emerson said, restaurants usually either break even for the day after the donation, or make a higher profit than they would otherwise.
Tasia Tsoulouhas, who works at Cascade Pizza Inn, said she estimated the family-owned Italian restaurant was 40 percent busier Tuesday evening than usual.
One patron, Donna Pattinson, said that even though she rarely dines out, she was at Cascade Pizza Inn Tuesday night because she heard the restaurant was giving a percentage of its profits to a cause associated with feeding homeless people.
Getting community support
Maple Alley Inn has about 40 volunteers who have been making meals from scratch for seniors and people who are homeless, disabled or on limited incomes for 20 years. It was started in an alley off of Maple Street, behind the YWCA. The event has had several homes since then, Finet said, and now it takes place at Faith Lutheran Church on Northwest Avenue and McLeod Road.
Finet said that in addition to the funding it gets from Dine Out, Maple Alley Inn is supported by businesses like Hudson’s Bay and the Community Food Co-op.
“I think Maple Alley Inn enjoys a lot of community support from individuals and from businesses who donate food or money to make this program possible,” Emerson said.
She said the idea for Dine Out came from similar events elsewhere in the United States. It started with the Opportunity Council convincing a few restaurants that the event would be good for business, Emerson said, and now some restaurants contact the Opportunity Council to say they want to be a part of it.
Patrons do their part
Pattinson said she left a larger tip Tuesday night than she usually does.
“I feel I did my fair share,” she said.
Sara Burns, who Dined Out with her family, said her 16-year-old daughter heard about the event at school and encouraged her family to eat at Cascade Pizza Inn that night because it was an important cause to her.
“Especially in this economy,” Burns said, “you want to help as many people as you can.”
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