Analysis

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Recession creates some winners

By: Allen Abel

Posted: 11/1/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

COLUMBIA, Md. -- The sign of the worst times in 80 years reads: ORDERS BOOKS AND MUSIC.

Jorge Martínez already has a big, black plastic B in the bucket of his cherry-picker as he starts to pound and pry the letter O from the wall above the once-grand entrance of the abandoned literary superstore.

Through the front doors, I can see shelves marked HOME & GARDEN and COLLECTIBLES & HOBBIES, as empty as the former owner's dreams.

So passes the Borders outlet at Columbia Crossings, the entire national bankrupt 500-unit chain, and 20,000 employees from here to Hawaii.

Who's next, I wonder, glancing around the plaza at The RoomStore Furniture ("Inventory Liquidation Sale!") and BigLots! and Jo-Ann Floral Décor Fabric Crafts ("Experience the Creativity!").

Martínez is lowering his cage down to street level to make room for R, D, E, and so forth when we notice there is a perfect, delicate wasps' nest mortared inside the belly of the B.

"Bees, birds' nests, we get that all the time," he says with a shrug. "I can't count how many times I've been stung."

If the Great Recession has taught Americans anything, it is that it is better to have an occupational hazard than to have no occupation at all. With at least 20 million people out of work, with half of the houses, in some areas, worth less than their mortgages, and with little confidence in the air that a meaningful recovery will occur within this decade, profiting from someone else's failure may be the only growth industry left.

Even in the Washington region, where the economic and social catastrophe has been felt much less acutely than anywhere else in the country, the business of taking off signs is taking off.

"It's very sad," Jorge Martínez says. "At this time it's getting worse and worse. Two years ago, 100 per cent of our work was installation. This year, 70 per cent is take-down. I prefer to start a sign for somebody than to take it down."

Martínez has made so much money dismantling signage in this hour of others' distress that he has been able to go home to Mexico City and invest in a sand and gravel business, with healthy returns.

Also thriving is Jorge's boss here in Maryland, a man named Jeff LaBrier who owns a company called ARK Sign Services Inc.

ARK headquarters is located in an industrial park just off the famous Beltway that insulates the arrogance of the capital from the anguish and anger of the United States of America. When I drop in for a visit, LaBrier shows me a few of his current works-in-progress, including big white panels for a spa that is going to be called either Massage Envy or Envy Massage.

The sign business seems to be a rare, thriving segment of a sagging economy.

When Walmart replaces its hyphen with a blooming flower; when Wells Fargo Bank absorbs a moribund rival called Wachovia; when Home Depot upgrades from neon signs to LEDs, ARK gets the call for the work at outlets around Washington.

But when Linens 'n' Things liquidated more than 500 retail outlets and jettisoned 7,000 breadwinners a couple of years ago, LaBrier never got paid.

"Is this a happy business or a sad business?" I ask him.

"For us, it's a happy business," he replies. "It's the natural cycle -- one retailer goes out, and another comes in. It's good for the economy -- new concepts, new ideas."

Indeed, out at Columbia Crossings, the big box formerly filled by Borders is about to re-open as a virtually identical enterprise called Books-A-Million.

The new sign over the entrance, already on order at ARK, will say BAM! BOOKS-TOYS-TECH-MORE.

Whether the venture will survive or perish, no tome on a shelf can tell.

While the country waits for recovery, or even further ruin, LaBrier takes me out behind his office, where three big electrical signs that say Chicago and PIZZERIA and UNO are neatly stacked.

"They called us on a Thursday and asked us to come take the sign down that night," he says. "The employees didn't know anything about it. The people came to work the next morning -- no sign, no restaurant, no job."

The letterman shrugs.

"Happens all the time."

Allen Abel is a Brooklyn-born Canadian journalist based in Washington, D.C.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 1, 2011 A13

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