News
Wednesday, September 25, 2013 • page 8
West End ownership changes hands: Q&A with former owner Josh Ezrine
Q: Why did you decide to sell West End?
A: I had been looking for someone to buy it for
a few years. I’d been there 10 years, and I have
a young son, and it’s just not fair to him. I’m
not 23 years old anymore. It’s hard to work till
3 a.m. and then come home and take care of
your family and give your son the attention he
deserves, the attention he needs.
Q: What are some of the struggles in keeping an
Elon business open and profitable?
A; It’s tough not getting the support that you
need from the community, as well as the uni
versity. You would think that, as a local business.
West End would deserve and get more support.
Student support has always been great, always
steady. But from my perspective, being there
10 years, it seems like the university still looks
upon West End like a black sheep in the com
munity.
Q: Why would the university consider West End a
“black sheep”? What kind of drinking environment
did youprovidefor students under your ownership?
A: West End is a place in which kids who are
over 21 can drink in a safe environment. It’s not
illegal. It’s heavily supervised. We made sure to
watch over the students, to give them one of
the few safe places where they could go out and
drink responsibly, with some level of supervi
sion.
Q: How is student drinking at West End different
from where they might go offcampus, otherwise?
A; You hear about those incidents with alco
hol poisoning, the horror stories where kids
wi.nd up in the hospital, sometimes even dead.
And it’s just about always at off-campus par
ties. They might not teU you that, you might
not hear about it, but it’s definitely there, and
it happens just about every weekend. At West
End, we’re diligent. We’re watching over stu
dents. We’re making sure no one underage
drinks, and we’re making sure those who are
21 are drinking responsibly. Our first concern
is your safety.
Compiled by Michael Bodley, assistant news editor
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Josh Ezrine, former owner of West End Station, sold the establishment in order to spend time with his family.
Familiar face challenges incumbent Ronnie Wall for mayor of Burlington
Michael Bodley
Assistant News Editor
After graduating from Elon University
five years ago, Ian Baltutis never left Bur
lington. And he’s now trying to unseat in
cumbent Ronnie Wall as the next mayor of
the city.
Baltutis is new to politics and he faces a
recognizable candidate with political expe
rience in Wall. Wall has been mayor since
2007, and he was challenged for his seat
only once in 2009.
But Baltutis has done his homework,
preparing a comprehensive campaign strat
egy under the guidance of seasoned veterans
of local politics.
“At the very beginning of the campaign,
we spent quite a number of weeks meeting
with different elected officials and previous
ly elected officials from around the country
to gauge strategy and get feedback for the
Burlington community,” he said. “We re
ally wanted to figure out the direction that
would be best for Burlington.”
Baltutis points to his business back
ground as experience enough, political pedi
gree aside. He has built a business from the
ground up since graduating from Elon with
a degree in business administration. His
start-up. The Vibration Solution, has grown
to become the world’s largest producer of
ultra-soft polymers, which are used to quiet
the noise made by dishwashers and other
large household appliances.
But Baltutis’business experience may not
be enough to win the election, according to
Kenneth Fernandez, assistant professor of
political science and director of the Elon
Poll.
“A candidate who had prior experience
serving on a city council or a school board
might have an advantage over someone who
is a businessman,” Fernandez said.
At the same time, local elections tend to
have much lower voter turnouts than those
on the national stage, making the results dif
ficult to predict.
“The key thing to keep in mind with any
type of local election, particularly with a
smaller place, is most people just don’t know
much about all of the candidates,” said Ja
son Husser, assistant professor of political
science and assistant director of the Elon
Poll. “That makes these kind of elections ex
tremely volatile. Often we don’t know how
elections will go until they actually happen.
You sometimes see a correlation by alpha
betical order of name and their vote share.”
In order to accomplish his goals once in
office, Baltutis craves the support of a par
ticular demographic that has been conspicu
ously absent from Burlington over the last
decade: people aged 18-40.
Over the past decade, Burlington has
grown by 11.5 percent as a whole. But the
18-40 age group has seen no grorvth at all.
Young professionals are finishing school and
leaving Burlington behind, a trend Baltutis
would very much like to see reversed.
“We need to grow across all age demo
graphics, in order to make sure we strength
en our economy not only today, but for the
coming decade,” he said. “The economy
needs young people, needs new ideas.”
And while he seeks to keep younger
people in Burlington, Baltutis is still young
himself, which may complicate his cam
paign planning.
“The key challenge for young people to
overcome is to establish credibility early on
in the race, so that people can see them as a
person of maturity,” Husser said. “And that’s
not necessarily easy to do in a race that peo
ple might not pay that much attention to to
begin with.”
If he wins the election, Baltutis has plans
to more closely integrate Elon with the Bur
lington community. He pointed out that the
Elon BioBus is open to the general public,
though many members of the community
think it’s only available to students.
The BioBus is part of a larger plan of Bal
tutis to overhaul the city’s public transporta
tion system, slowly, as not to overwhelm the
city with exorbitant costs that have caused
previous efforts to fail.
He also has spoken with the Love School
of Business about a program that would
match entrepreneurial Elon students with
local businesses in an internship of sorts that
would benefit local businesses while giving
students real world experience.
The idea being that there’s no better way
to get this experience on an entry level than
to get down and dirty, hands on, with some
body that s fighting for their business’ life,”
he said.