By Ashley Jin
Every time I go home to New York City during school breaks, I find myself spending most of my time in SoHo, the beloved shopping district for the young people of Manhattan. SoHo is where I take my friends to shop, run into old high school classmates, and bump into other Cornell students on the main street. It makes sense that this is where all of Gen Z congregates to chase the newest fashion trends. Brandy Melville and Aritzia are the crowd favorites, of course, but SoHo is also home to vintage thrift stores and luxury brands. The bustling environment is such a stark contrast from the collegetown that I left behind in Ithaca.
Since I grew up in the heart of the largest city in the United States, going to college in the upstate “countryside” was obviously a big adjustment. Back at home, Target and Trader Joe’s are both a two-minute walk away; now, if I want to go to Trader Joe’s from my dorm, I have to brave a 40-minute commute that involves two buses. Admittedly, this means I’ve only ventured into the “city” of Ithaca, called the Commons, a few times. While I was walking through the Commons one day with my friend on a bright sunny day, I was shocked that the streets lined with shops were completely empty. “Collegetown,” an area right next to Cornell with many restaurants, was deserted. Most students had already finished finals and left campus. The main local shopping mall is also always vacant during my Target runs. It has been interesting to see how location matters so much for the success of businesses. I’ve always wondered how all these stores here are making enough money to stay open, especially when college students are away.
Businesses in small towns, especially those centered around colleges, must employ different strategies to stay profitable compared to those in the city. It’s hard enough to be a small business, but it’s even harder to be a small business in a small city. Last semester, I read in Cornell’s The Daily Sun that the newly opened gift shop in Collegetown – Loki Dokey – was facing financial strains “due to high rent, import costs and low visibility.” Between Cornell and Ithaca College, it feels like half of Ithaca’s population is college students; this definitely isn’t enough to sustain consistent sales, and college students typically don’t have as much disposable income without jobs. Local businesses in Collegetown are heavily dependent on students, with restaurants and bars significantly reducing business hours according to Cornell’s scheduled breaks. Even more well-established businesses like The Watershed, a bar that has been open for nearly a decade, had to shut down at the end of 2025. According to The Ithaca Voice, “the new local living wage has risen to $24.82 per hour,” which seems unsustainable.
One of the biggest issues for local businesses in a college town is affording the location. Rent in Ithaca is highly inflated, driven up by university housing demand, and shipping products to a remote place is also expensive. In the September 2025 city council forum, candidates acknowledged that high housing costs and property taxes were the largest concerns. Tompkins Cortland Community College professor Pat Sewell has additionally highlighted that “improving downtown business will be important for raising sales tax revenue” and “raising funds for local government,” which is essential to the town’s general economy. His top priority is supporting small businesses through the Downtown Ithaca Alliance, which provides economic development services to reduce operating costs. While these businesses are challenged, the student demand for food and coffee shops that double as study spots keeps certain sectors thriving. Word spreads like fire among college students, so leveraging the student community and building a strong reputation is definitely a top priority.
There are so many entrepreneurs who target starting their businesses in San Francisco’s Silicon Valley or New York City, but these hotspots also come with major obstacles. Small cities may actually offer a different type of opportunity to stand out. College towns are a niche case, but in general, the cost of entering the market is far more affordable in a smaller city. There is typically less cut-throat competition and space to provide an actually needed service, rather than competing in the desperate struggle to differentiate. Businesses can better focus on building deep relationships with their local community, which not only naturally leads to loyalty among their customers but also attracts more of them.
A study published in the Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies titled “‘Small town’ entrepreneurial ecosystems” discussed theories of how businesses can succeed in more remote locations. The researchers identified that one strategy is to “attract human capital rather than focusing exclusively on developing it from within the ecosystem.” In terms of financing, small-town businesses could turn to angel investors and locally-based groups rather than venture capitalists and large firms. Entrepreneurship in small cities is often overlooked, yet essential to the local economies. In “Entrepreneurship in small and medium-sized towns,” published in Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, the author argues that the field suffers from an urban bias, with policies favoring large cities because there is simply more data and research available on them. However, a one-size-fits-all framework may not be right, when factors like “industrial composition” and local “entrepreneurial dynamics” may “play a more important role in determining the success (and failure) of smaller urban places.”
Especially with the recent tariff policies in the United States, it is more crucial than ever to ensure that all businesses are being supported. This is particularly important in our already often disadvantaged rural communities. Despite the Supreme Court striking down $100 billion in government revenue that was earned from tariffs, refund payments to local businesses will inevitably be a messy and confusing process. In the New York Times article “Tariffs Confound Small Businesses Again,” the owner of a small clothing store in New Jersey explained that the refunds would help a lot with short-term business expenses and keeping prices affordable.
Shopping in Ithaca has definitely made me appreciate smaller businesses in smaller cities. When I spend my money here, it feels like I am making a genuine contribution to the owners’ personal lives, families, and the overall community while fulfilling my own needs. In a place like New York City, I find myself too often paying for overpriced products to feed a corporate machine in an oversaturated market of competition and price wars. Every business in a small city has its own unique impact, directly adding value not just to the economy, but also to its culture. They deserve more attention for the work that they do.