Is Wal*Mart inevitable? The short answer is probably, 'yes.' We live in a market economy and if a company has the money to do something, and it's not against the law, there's not a whole lot we can do to stop it.

However, thinking about the historic tax post above, there are ways that cities/towns can encourage 'good' development and discourage 'bad' development. Raise the tax rate in virgin areas as a way to make developers pay for the new infrustructure that their development will need. Use taxes to encourage business to develop near existing business districts and in existing unused buildings.

On Cape Cod the Cape Cod Commission reviews all developments of critical regional impact (which includes big box stores). The Commission has the power to instruct the developer to change their design to better fit the asthetic environment. They also have the power to force developers to mitigate their impact with things like road improvements (often far from the actual development site), purchase of land for open space preservation (again, often far from the development site). In the case of Home Depot coming to Hyannis, Home Depot was forced to occupy a store left vacant by bankrupt Bradlees. This forced Home Depot to create a much smaller store than they have throughout the rest of the country. The Commission also forced Home Depot to carry less products that are considered environmental contaminants (oils, fertilizers, paints) and made the company clean up a brown field on an unrelated site as mitigation for possible future contamination that Home Depot could cause (of course if Home Depot did cause environmental damage, they would be liable for that too).

Many towns are too quick to throw up their arms and plead that they need the tax money. If they say no, the neighbouring town will say yes. Towns need to learn to say 'yes, but...' And if groups of towns were able to work together (the way the Cape has through the Cape Cod Commission), that pressure to say yes to anything to get the tax money would lessen.

I don't know if anyone is reading a topic this far down the screen, but I thought I'd share a Walmart tale out here from Rochester, MN before I move to Providence.

We had a grocery store landscape that used to look like this in the Rochester Metro only 3 and 1/2 years ago (pop 100,000):
- Hyvee (3 stores)
- Rainbow (3 stores)
- Econofoods (2 stores)
- Cub (1 store)
- Several small Asian markets
- One or two small neighborhood markets

These stores all competed against each other fiercely. Then, in the last 3 and 1/2 years, we've had both a Super Target and a Walmart Supercenter open, both with grocery stores and both about 2 minutes away from one another. Last year, the three Rainbow markets closed, and now it was announced this week that the two Econofood markets are closing. Our supermarket lineup now looks like this:
- Walmart Supercenter
- Super Target
- Hyvee (3 stores)
- Cub (1 store)
- The small Asian and neighborhood markets

If Hyvee were to close its three stores in the future, the entire Rochester metro would only be served by Walmart and Target for its grocery needs, with only Cub on the edge of town for competition.

Now, I'm all for free-market economics, but I'm not sure the architects of our capitalist system ever intended for this to be the type of playing field. And this only happened in about the last 2 years. Amazing...

This is what Providence has to fear with a Walmart moving to town (and yes, I know they won't be carrying groceries...).

Garris