Fargo store owner right to cry foul

Talk about it

The owner of a Fargo downtown retail store is justified in his upset with North Dakota State University. NDSU has established a branch of the campus bookstore in the Cityscapes development, a residential and retail building that caters to university students. Greg Danz of Zandbroz Variety on Broadway, just a few blocks from Cityscapes, said the publicly subsidized competition with his 18-year-old private retail business is out of line.

It’s hard to argue with his logic.

The 5,000-square-foot university store, funded by its own profits and not directly subsidized, will nonetheless be in direct competition with book-selling at Zandbroz. The NDSU store will feature some 9,000 titles, a coffee shop, magazines and publishing services. Zandbroz has an estimated 10,000 titles. The Broadway store also is known for being a showcase for local and regional authors.

Competition in retailing is desirable. But when the competitive arena includes a player tied to a large academic institution with resources that no locally owned private store can muster, it’s unfair. It seems especially distasteful in the Zandbroz case because Danz took a chance on downtown before the renaissance, and since has had to deal with street construction and other business-killers. He’s stayed with downtown despite those circumstances, and continues to operate one of the retail establishments that make downtown unique.

The NDSU Bookstore is a fine operation that has served students well for generations. The downtown branch certainly will do the same. But the downtown store is off campus in a retail district dominated by private, non-subsidized businesses. The majority of potential customers likely will not be students. The owner of Zandbroz is right to cry foul.

Tags: book store, opinion, editorial, fargo