Destination Main Street

10/03/2025

October 2025

10/02/2025

This! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Last week I spoke with a woman from the Pacific Northwest about her town. She described it as historic, walkable, with a harbor people adore. And yet, despite everyone agreeing that the “old stuff” is the best stuff, every new resident ends up buying in a subdivision.

You know the pattern: new houses get built on the edges, people drive everywhere, parking becomes the obsession, and downtown fills with SUVs. The very qualities that attracted newcomers vanish under the weight of sprawl.

Community members feel like growth is ruining the town, but growth itself isn’t the problem. For centuries, adding people made cities better, more trades, more skills, more resilience. It’s only since the 1950s, when we outlawed normal neighborhood building and handed cities over to mega-developers, that growth turned toxic.

Subdivisions aren’t investments, they’re strip-mining operations. Developers clear the land, throw up cheap houses, and leave. Locals don’t benefit, new residents don’t integrate, and the community loses. Everyone walks away thinking “growth ruins towns,” when really it’s sprawl that ruins towns.

The solution isn’t complicated: build more of what already works. Walkable, mixed neighborhoods. Small lots. Local ownership. Another block of shops. Another cluster of houses near schools. This isn’t lost knowledge, it’s the exact way every good town was built in the first place.

Cities can grow without getting worse. They used to. They can again.

09/19/2025

🤩 New Newsletter’s Out!

I just hit “send” on the latest issue of my newsletter, The Bungalow Diaries, and now you can read it right here:

👉🏼 http://bit.ly/4nJ2v8j

If you like what you see, why not get it delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up here:

👉🏼 https://bit.ly/46vv81A

I promise: no spam, just stories, photos, and a little Main Street magic. 🌻

09/19/2025

This week on the blog, I’m sharing a story about my friend Lisa, an online friendship that lasted three years. Friendship in this age doesn’t always look like coffee shop meetups or long dinners. Sometimes it looks like a postcard, a string of messages, and the ache of losing someone you never sat across from but still called a friend. Read it here:

👉🏼 https://marjoriehenise.com/the-bungalow-diaries/a-friendship-without-goodbye-and-the-postcard-that-remains

I hope this week you’ll pause and reach out to a friend... the kind you can’t imagine your days without. Send the text. Write the postcard. Let them know.

Thanks for letting me share a personal story this week. Writing it was hard, but it felt important. If you’ve ever lost a friendship that didn’t fit the usual mold, I’d love to hear from you.

09/10/2025

09/10/2025

"Yes, McDonald’s is unhealthy, ugly, and cheap, and yes, it drags down the identity and pride of a place, but those aren’t even the worst reasons."

I love this response to a councilwoman's question about what justification she might have to oppose a McDonald's in her town.

Last week a city councilwoman in Iowa emailed me about a proposed McDonald’s in her community. She asked what justification she might have to oppose it. The truth is there are plenty. Yes, McDonald’s is unhealthy, ugly, and cheap, and yes, it drags down the identity and pride of a place, but those aren’t even the worst reasons.

I did some digging. The average McDonald’s franchise lasts about twenty years, though thirty isn’t uncommon. A typical store does roughly three million dollars in sales each year. Of that, at least half, about one and a half million, leaves the community. Over twenty years that means thirty million dollars has been extracted from one town.

Building a McDonald’s usually costs somewhere between one and two and a half million dollars. Let’s use the high end. At the end of its twenty-year run, after the grease stains have set in, the community has traded a two and a half million dollar investment for twenty-seven and a half million in lost wealth. I am no Wall Street economist, but that doesn’t sound like a good deal. Sure, some people like Big Macs. Yes, there is an upfront investment. And yes, a handful of low-wage jobs get created. But does that add up to a net win for a community? I am not sure, but lean towards no.

People will always make arguments in favor of chains, because they are familiar, because they have “always been around,” because inertia is easier than change. But let’s be serious, national chains are Wall Street economic development, not Main Street. Their business model is to enrich someone far away while draining resources from your town. That isn’t an opinion, it’s math. Think of it like mining equipment. The upfront investment looks shiny, but its whole purpose is to take wealth away over time. Parasites don’t feed the host, they feed off it.

Now, imagine a different approach. What if the community invested just ten percent of what McDonald’s will cost them over the next twenty years into local entrepreneurs? If McDonald’s sees a market gap, why not fill it locally?

Take that three million dollars and use it to train a couple of recent graduates in hospitality and culinary arts. Help them renovate a vacant downtown building. Give them the support to actually own something in their hometown. Over twenty years, those young entrepreneurs could generate six to nine million in payroll and owner income, another one to two million in local supplier purchases, and five to ten million in economic spillover. Add sixty to one hundred thousand in new property tax revenue and the savings of no longer carrying a vacant building, and the community could be looking at twelve to twenty million dollars in positive local impact. Compare that to the thirty million extracted by a McDonald’s and you have a potential fifty million dollar swing, all by investing in locals instead of carpetbaggers.

Someday I hope this becomes the standard for economic development. Not chasing national chains, but building local, superior alternatives. If people in your town want coffee, don’t sell them a Starbucks. Help a couple of locals open a shop that is one-of-a-kind, owned and operated by neighbors and friends. If there is a need for another grocery store, give a twenty-something their dream shot at running one.

Our communities are full of talent and drive. People are desperate to be involved, desperate to have ownership. If we keep outsourcing that opportunity to distant shareholders, we will have no one to blame when our towns collapse in on themselves. Parasites eventually kill their host. Locals build a future.

09/09/2025

So many places to go, so little time to visit! Where will you be heading to see the fall colors this year?

Fall foliage tourism has a substantial economic impact on small towns and rural areas nationwide. Learn how Main Streets can leverage their leaves to boost their communities this fall.

09/05/2025

When you walk into my little bungalow, you’ll notice right away it’s not a Martha Stewart spread. It’s a mix of old and new, who I’ve been and who I’m becoming, and scattered through it all are the souvenirs I’ve collected along the way.

This week on the blog, I’m sharing three of my favorites and the stories they carry: from Brazil, to Iowa’s Field of Dreams, to the coast of Connecticut.

https://marjoriehenise.com/the-bungalow-diaries/souvenirs-with-stories-what-i-bring-home-from-my-travels

09/03/2025

08/01/2025

🏄‍♂️ August comes rushing in and your favorite beach town is waiting for you! I found these beauties tucked beside a weathered boathouse in Lewes, DE.

Swipe right to screenshot your August wallpaper!