River Cities Business Journal: Cover Story

River Cities Business Journal

Sometime down the road the drive from south of Lake Havasu City to North of Bullhead City won't look at all like it does today.

Before a driver comes to Lake Havasu a bypass will take them on Highway 95 east of the city on a limited access, multi-lane highway.

It will link up with the current 95 near the airport.

When they reach I-40 another new stretch of 95 will take them on another limited access route through the Black Mountains east of Bullhead City to Highway 68.

It will be very similar to traveling on an Interstate highway and cut miles and many minutes off the drive from south to north in the western part of the county.

It is nothing but a concept right now, but the Arizona Department of Transportation, Mohave County, Lake Havasu City and Bullhead City are conspiring to make it happen.

“We're continuing to work with the state on aligning State Route 95 to State Route 68,” Steve Latoski, who represents the engineering manager for design in Mohave County, said. “(Near Bullhead City) it will run on the west side of the Black Mountains. That is the defined corridor that has been studied.

“With the State Route 95 realignment, it is our understanding that ADOT is taking the lead in the design concept for the preferred realignment.”

“The price of memory, RAM, has also dropped.”

There were quite a few other comments from retail managers in the area but they were usually preceded by “I'm not allowed to comment” or “You ‘ll have to call our company headquarters...” somewhere east of the Mississippi.

And even “We have a PR firm that handles all media inquiries...” somewhere east of the Mississippi.

But, the off the record comments that followed were things like “Great,” or “Better than we expected,” or “We're doing, really, really well.”

And, overheard by a shelf stocker at WalMart in Kingman “I heard we've done a million dollars a day since November.” (But, you have to call their corporate offices east of the Mississippi to get comment from WalMart.)

The problem was it was either Sunday night before Christmas Eve or the day of Christmas Eve and no one would be available at corporate headquarters or PR firms to comment., especially given the time difference.

But, that brought up another question - why are all the retail outlets that are making huge holiday sales corporately owned? Why aren't any locally-owned businesses on the list of places to query about sales?

Then the search began for a locally-owned business that might have strong retail sales for the holiday. I came up with two ideas. One was to find a jeweler. But, alas, the only jewelry store I went into the owner wasn't there (already headed off for the holiday). The other was a bicycle shop. There wasn't one nearby at the the time so that fell off the chart as well.

The sad truth is there are very few retailers in the area that are owned by people in the area and profit from the holiday season.

A lot of money is kept in the by all the workers who man the stores, but the profit from Mohave County is distributed to share holders all over the world.

It is really kind of an odd situation because the majority of businesses in the region are locally owned, but they are also mostly service businesses that don't take in a lot of holiday money.

I'm sure a few cars were given away as presents and maybe even some land. So some auto dealers made a little Christmas money and maybe a Realtor or two.

But, very few people gave accountant services, legal services, heating and air conditioning service or even automobile tires away as Christmas presents.

It made me think about where I spend my money and where it goes and I made my first New Year's resolution - in 2008 I'm going to try and find ways to spend my money locally and help boost the local economy whenever I can.

Its something I think a lot more of us should do because we all should want to help our neighbors more than some stockholder - east of the Mississippi.

Ric Swats is the editor of the Journal. His opinions are his own and may not represent the view of the River Cities Business Journal.