Last weekend The New York Times featured a rather scary article about the economic downturn ruining Garden City business. Accompanying the article was a photo of empty tables along Seventh Street.

The Garden City Chamber of Commerce has responded to the article in our letters to the editor section. Specifically, the Chamber points out that there continues to be a very low vacancy rate among stores in the business district and several new enterprises about to open. (We know of four new food / restaurant businesses opening: Seventh Street Gourmet, Rotico Rotisserie, Natural Supermarket and La Nonna Bella, in addition to the new Bank of Smithtown branch.)

In fact, when taken as a whole including Franklin Avenue, the business district is thriving compared to the way it was a decade ago. With the departure of several of the large department stores at that time, things looked dim indeed for Garden City's business base. But the streetscape project and the investment of commercial developers into the business area have completely reversed what, at the time, looked like a downward spiral.

While we should all take the bad economic news seriously, and take care not to become overextended, let's not create a self-fulfilling prophecy by declaring that a depression is upon us.

Let's just wait and see - sometimes things don't turn out as predicted. Remember when we were told that oil prices would never be below $100 a barrel again?

Meg Morgan Norris

Publisher