Dover Mayor Wants Name Change to Attract Chain Stores
by Joseph A. Lypowy
At recent township meetings,
Dover Township Mayor Paul Brush has been pushing for a referendum to
change the name of Dover Township. He uses as his main reason for the
name change that the current name hinders marketing. He is quoted at a
recent “Meet the Mayor” program as saying, “Confusion about the
township’s name has hindered efforts to lure national chain restaurants,
bookstores and other upscale ratables to town”. This is the new
propaganda used by advocates of the name change, especially when the old
rhetoric of lost mail does not apply any more due to automated zip code
processing.
Lets ask the mayor for some evidence of his claims. You sure can say
that national chain stores like Ekerd Drugs, CVS Pharmacies, Walgreens,
Perkins, Wendy’s, just to name a few, have not had any problems locating
in Dover Twp.. What about the Home Depot and Pathmark that wanted to
build on Fischer Blvd. and were run out on a rail? Were they confused
about the name of the town? Those super-duper sized WaWa Gas Stations,
were they confused too? Also, the open space nuts keep on crying that
there’s no land left anyway, and that they want to slow down growth, so
what’s the ergency to attract national chain stores?
Recently Brush also said that he wanted to be the Mayor of Toms
River instead of Dover Twp.. From his own statement it is clear that he
is in favor of attracting national chain stores and restaurants. I say,
I prefer to support locally owned businesses. Family owned small
businesses that are owned by people who are our neighbor and friends. We
have plenty of excellent locally owned establishments, we don’t need to
create excess competition to local merchants, those national chains can
take care of themselves. Of coarse some of the “connected” lawyers and
engineers like those national chains over the local “mom and pops”
because they have deep pockets and plenty of money to throw around.