Need to find an air conditioning repair man or plumber? How about a contractor to do your kitchen remodel, an eye doctor, or a lawyer to draft your will? You may be tempted to open the yellow pages and call a business with a location closest to your home, but that could be a costly mistake.
“There’s no way to determine if that business is a quality business. The information that is presented to you in the yellow pages is developed to get you to do one thing, call. You don’t know if the company you’re calling is reputable, has customer referrals, or is even capable of doing a good job. But, what if you could find the business from a trusted source such as your neighbor?†says Brian Mehnert, director of NeighborReferrals.com. The new web site, launched in January 2005, is a free service people can use to share information with their friends and neighbors about both positive and negative experiences they’ve had with businesses that have done work for them.
Padma Hiremath, 36, of Aldie, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., discovered NeighborReferrals.com this past July when she had to find a company to reseal her driveway. “I’ve been using Respond.com (an online community that matches consumers with quality merchants) for a couple of years now and when I went there this time, I couldn’t find a service provider in my neighborhood so I decided to check out the link to Respond Neighborhoods on their homepage,†she says.
When she clicked on the link, she was redirected to www.neighborreferrals.com, where she was prompted to form a neighborhood group of her own and given the tools needed to invite her friends and neighbors to join. Within just a few days, a dozen people had joined and all of them posted five or six referrals of their own. Among those referrals were a deck builder, pediatrician, dentist, veterinarian and a driveway repair service that had just completed work on a nearby street.
“The referral came from a neighbor I didn’t know, so I walked over to their house to check out the work and was impressed enough to follow through on the referral,†says Hiremath. Not only did she save time by not having to go out and find a reputable business on her own, she saved money. “When I called the company up, they were a lot cheaper than other services I had found on my own.â€
“When someone like a driveway repair company or deck builder comes into a neighborhood and does a good job, that business is likely to get more business from some of the homeowner’s neighbors. If that homeowner puts a good review up on our site, that word of mouth has the potential to reach hundreds more people,†says Mehnert.
So far, most of the people who have joined are members of neighborhood communities and some Homeowner Associations. “Anyone can join -- friends, family, co-workers, school groups, even alumni associations,†says Mehnert.
To check out the site for yourself, log on to www.neighborreferrals.com.
Courtesy of ARA Content
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Former Harry's Supermarket Under Construction for Restaurant
Late last month, the Conservation Commission greenlit some tree pruning on the property. New windows and a new door can be seen in the front of the building.
"It's a substantial renovation that's currently underway here," Brent White of White Engineering said, speaking on behalf of the applicant and owner, Huajie Zhu.
A fire gutted the longtime Wahconah Street supermarket in 2023, and the following year, Zhu purchased the property for $460,000 two years ago to build a restaurant with hibachi in the existing footprint of the more than 100-year-old building.
White explained that the project has been ongoing for over a year, and the Community Development Board granted the property a waiver to reduce the minimum required number of parking spaces so that additional spaces aren't needed.
He noted that, looking at the site plan, there is very little room to do so. A mirror will be installed near the sharp turn on Bel Air Avenue to alleviate traffic concerns.
Pruning will be done on trees in the southeast corner of the existing paved parking lot, as a number of branches are hanging over. The new owners also intend to patch, sealcoat, and re-stripe the parking lot.
A fire tore through the building less than an hour after the supermarket closed for the day three years ago. An automatic sprinkler system is required for the new use.
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