One-Shop Stopping

Do Wal-Mart and Home Deport spell the end of "community"? A report on the superstore wars.

Nick Gillespie from the May 1995 issue

(Page 3 of 6)

In Greenfield, Massachusetts, dubbed the "birthplace" of the anti-superstore movement by Governing magazine, there seemed to be a bit of confusion about what form community decision making should take. In 1993, developers asked for zoning variances so Wal-Mart could build a 121,267-square-foot store on the edge of town. A non-binding referendum to allow the variances passed easily. Then a majority of the Town Council voted in favor of granting the variance (the land was originally zoned for industrial use). But the town's charter also allowed for a
binding referendum on the matter, which Al Norman's anti-Wal-Mart group pushed for. Sixty percent of registered voters turned out for the referendum and the plan for the new store lost by 9 votes, 2,854 to 2,845 (Greenfield's total population is 17,000).

The result, says Norman, "was a repudiation of the assumption that of course people would want another discounter in town." People on the losing end are not as sanguine: "The vote has split the town," says Selectman Bernard McGarrah, who was in favor of the Wal-Mart. "A smoldering resentment lingers."

Superstore Sprawl or Vital Communities is, without doubt, a brilliant way to frame the discussion. The phrase has a catchy cadence and populist ring. It rolls off the tongue and pops the question in a way that precludes too much reflection. Your money or your life? Sprawl or community? There is, the question implies, a single obvious answer.

And yet the dichotomy embedded in the phrase is fundamentally false. There is no simple either/or answer when you're talking about complex human interactions and competing definitions of community. Although superstore opponents talk as if the distinction between sprawl and vitality is obvious, that's far from the case.

For instance, the activists fail to address the most basic point of the issue: People like these new stores. Wal-Mart, et al., aren't forcing people at gunpoint to shop their aisles. "It's worth remembering that America doesn't hate Wal-Mart," insists Leonard Berry, director of the Center for Retail Studies at Texas A&M. "There is obviously more than a little resentment in some communities towards Wal-Mart. But America doesn't hate Wal-Mart; America shops at Wal-Mart."

To be sure, Berry is something of a company man. The Center for Retail Studies is, he volunteers, funded by large retailers. "Wal-Mart is one of the 40 corporate sponsors, as is Kmart, Home Depot, and most of the companies on your list," he says with a resigned chuckle. But his observation is demonstrably true. When he notes that "no other company comes close to the success [Wal-Mart] enjoys today," the point is inarguable.

A more accurate--if equally contentious--way to frame the argument is to compare evolving, self-rejuvenating communities that adapt to the needs of their citizens and ones that embody what F.A. Hayek called the "fatal conceit": the belief "that man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes."

In this sense, the anti-superstore activists are the enemies of vitality, not its champions. By seeking to preserve things as they are--or were--they squelch spontaneous developments that arise in response to the myriad, often inchoate needs and desires of individuals.

If the activists falsely oppose superstore sprawl to vital communities, they also misrepresent what happens to a town's economy when a mega-retailer opens its automatic sliding doors. The trends that have turned customers off to downtown shopping areas were in place long before chains such as Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Target (all of which opened in 1962) arrived on the scene.

"We started seeing the demise of downtowns in the 1920s and '30s, when cars started to become more popular. Basically, it began when people gained mobility," says Kenneth Stone, an Iowa State University economics professor who has studied the impact of Wal-Mart on towns in the United States and Canada. "Especially after World War II, you started seeing people migrating out of cities and then shopping closer to where they lived. The advent of shopping malls in the '50s and '60s really took people out of the downtowns," says Stone.

For the anti-superstore activists, wide-scale mobility was the beginning of the breakdown of "livable communities." The automobile looms large in the activists' worldview as a symbol of American alienation. Cars, after all, allow people to scatter and form associations based on individual needs and desires, as opposed to living within a static, immobile community. And, as with the superstores they drive to, Americans like cars--and always have. In fact, by 1930, there was one car for every 1.3 households.

Does a Wal-Mart or another superstore inevitably spell doom for local merchants? Iowa State's Stone--who says he neither likes nor hates the chain--notes that overall sales in local areas will increase at least for the first couple of years. If you're selling something different from what Wal-Mart's offering, you'll probably be helped. If you're selling the same things, you'll probably lose sales if you don't reposition yourself, says Stone. "The truth is, a lot of local merchants have become better merchants because the level of competition has been raised."

John L. Gann Jr., head of an Illinois-based consulting firm that assists older businesses, agrees with Stone. He says the anti-superstore activists are essentially local protectionists who would rather compete in a political forum than in a commercial one.

Gann, who has worked with downtown areas in seven states in the industrial midwest and northeast, says that Wal-Mart and similar big retailers might put inefficient shopkeepers out of business, but the real problem is that many traditional, independent merchants aren't providing the service, the hours, the parking, or the merchandise people want. "A lot of shoppers today prefer a large selection and chain stores with names and reputations they know," says Gann.

And, despite claims that mega-stores are unstoppable "retail juggernauts," Gann notes, "When Wal-Mart or whoever opens a store, they make an investment in their store, their merchandise, their personnel, and what have you. They don't have one customer. Every customer they get, they have to win. And then they have to persuade people to keep coming back."