All posts in the topic Pawn shops in Roseville (Short link)
Summary
- There are 5 posts — by 4 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Dan Roe at Apr 19 02:16 UTC
There is a pretty healthy amount of feedback to the City Council at this time regarding an application for a Conditional Use Permit to allow a pawn shop at the strip center on the NW corner of Snelling Ave and Co Rd B. (The application is to be considered by the Council at its April 28th meeting.) Pawn shops, like liquor stores, are legal but pretty heavily regulated businesses in Minnesota, through a licensing process. Local cities are also able to put zoning restrictions on where they may be located, etc., as well as licensing restrictions on how they must cooperate with local police, etc. This type of business seems to have a very negative perception in the public, but there seems to be little factual information to back up peoples' concerns. See this link for an interesting opinion piece: http://www.twin-cities.com/opinion/ Certainly, pawn shops do serve an apparently needed service. Certainly, they have an incentive to cooperate with the local police, including electronic reporting of new items, which Roseville requires. See the Roseville City Code, Chapter 311, for more on our licensing and operation requirements for pawn shops. The code is available at the city's web site at www.ci.roseville.mn.us. Should we allow pawn shops at all in Roseville? Should we put restrictions on their locations, or how many licenses we allow, as we do with liquor stores? What are peoples' thoughts on this topic?
myself, i don't think the city should be artificially limiting the number of
any legal business in roseville. there is at least one pawn shop in roseville,
and i live just a few blocks away from it. i also patronize other stores that
are in the same strip mall as the pawn shop. i have never had any problems
shopping in that area and i have not seen any problems spilling over into my
neighborhood because of the pawn shop. no one should form an opinion of modern
pawn shops without having first visited one. i have been to a number of them
and modern pawn shops do not look any different than going to any other small
store.
i assume that pawn shops need to report to the city all of the items that are
placed with them for either sale or as collateral for loans. if i remember
correctly, the city pays a large amount of money to the city of minneapolis to
check to see if any of these items are reported stolen.
pawn shops are one of the few places where, on a regular basis, you can get rid
of items that you no longer need and receive money for them without the expense
and time of advertising them and waiting around for someone to respond to your
ad. pawn shops are also a good place to purchase used items at reasonable
prices.
therefore, i see no reason for the city to regulate the number of pawn shops
and i do not see any reason to regulate liquor stores, or any legal business
for that manner. it is not the job of the city to limit the amount of
competition between businesses in the city. let the marketplace regulate the
placement and number of all businesses, as long as they are in areas zoned for
business.
I tend to agree with Roger, he made some excellent points. In times of tight finances, I wish that I had the entrepreneurial spirit to open a pawn shop. To me, other than perhaps the negative perception of "Pawn Shop," there is not a big difference from a consignment shop. As *Dick Enrico* says, "*Why buy new when slightly used will do*? Pawn shops will survive as long as there is a market for second-hand goods. What better way to reduce, reuse, recycle items? Some people are not willing to sell their own goods through outlets such as www.eBay.com<http://www.ebay.com/> or www.craigslist.org. In my own efforts to save money, I tend to shop for things used first. I typically and quite frequently use ebay and craigslist to find the items. Now that the issue has been brought up, I might have to do some pawn shopping.
Here is some additional information, randomly selected, for people that might be interested in some more background: This link to Australia points to the relatively low % of stolen goods fenced at pawn shops, and the tendency for criminals to do their "business" close to where they live. (Without an understanding of their regulation of pawn shops, it is hard to relate the Australian experience to Roseville, MN, however.) http://www.crimeprevention.wa.gov.au/News/Announcements/210607BurglaryStudy/tabid/1285/Default.aspx An interesting recent story on WCCO TV noted the much greater ease of disposing of stolen property online than at pawn shops. http://wcco.com/iteam/shoplifting.retail.stores.2.570754.html There was a long story in City Pages in 1999 about a case in Minneapolis: http://www.citypages.com/databank/20/989/article8211.asp St. Louis Park has been sued by pawnshops related to changing their regulations. http://www.mnsun.com/articles/2007/10/20/news/fw18pawnshop.txt http://www.mnsun.com/articles/2008/02/28/news/sl28pawn.txt MPR has a story on who is using pawn shops these days: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/12/21/pawnshops/ I don't know that these articles point to any single easy solution, but they may help to provide a more complete picture of the matter.
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