Maine coastal communities are wrestling with big-box proposals that could drastically alter the character of their towns.
Retail giant Wal-Mart has proposed building superstores in several towns along the Route 1 corridor; the Super Wal-Marts would be so vast that they would dwarf other big box stores.
Local government officials often welcome the additional tax revenue a Super Wal-Mart might bring, but grassroots planning groups fear the superstore’s arrival could spell the end of downtown life.
Damariscotta and Ellsworth residents have both recently dealt with Super Wal-Mart proposals. Their differing approaches to the superstore highlight the struggle Maine coastal towns face between making a living and preserving a community.
A Successful Cap Campaign
Damariscotta voters soundly defeated a proposed Super Wal-Mart in March by voting for a size cap of 35,000 square feet on all retail development. The size cap ballot question, which drew the biggest voter turnout in Damariscotta history, passed by 62 percent.
Leading the charge for the size cap was Our Town Damariscotta, a local grassroots group formed by two area stay-at-home moms, Eleanor Kinney and Jenny Mayher. Both Kinney and Mayher routinely volunteered more than fifty hours a week to the campaign.
Kinney said her group succeeded largely by being able to build a broad base of support among community members.
“There was a real resonance in the community,” she said. “Our big message is towns do have a choice.”
Our Town Damariscotta was born last April, when Kinney and Mayher first heard rumors of the proposed Super Wal-Mart. The superstore was to be more than 100,000 square feet, three times larger than the largest building in Damariscotta. The store and parking lot would have encompassed more than 25 acres of building and asphalt.
Kinney says a Super Wal-Mart would have been completely out of character in Damariscotta, a small coastal community with a thriving downtown and less than 2,000 residents.
“The site plan for Wal-Mart was going to be bigger than the whole downtown,” Kinney said.
She said the superstore would also have been unnecessary since there were already three Super Wal-Marts within a 30-minute drive from Damariscotta.
Our Town members feared the Super Wal-Mart would harm downtown businesses and lead to more big box stores and fast food chains.
“It would just be the start of big box sprawl,” Kinney said.
Kinney and Mayher learned that the town’s selectmen had been approached about a Super Wal-Mart, but no formal application for the project had yet been submitted. They took the initiative and collected signatures calling for a moratorium on large-scale development.
“In a week, we had about a thousand signatures,” Kinney said.
After being presented with the petition, selectmen promised to study the matter and update land use ordinances. But Our Town members feared town officials wouldn’t move fast enough and that Super Wal-Mart might slip in during deliberations.
“The pace that they were taking with it — it was going to take many months,” Kinney said.
Instead of waiting, Our Town Damariscotta enlisted help from two organizations, Friends of Midcoast Maine and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Friends of Midcoast Maine helped Our Town broaden its movement to include other coastal towns in the area. Our Town chapters were subsequently started in Newcastle, Edgecomb, Warren, and Waldoboro.
Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, says a regional effort is a smart move against Wal-Mart. It neutralizes a common Wal-Mart threat to jump across town lines.
Mitchell and the Institute provided studies to Our Town Damariscotta showing that Wal-Mart can have a devastating impact on local economies (see box).
“It’s very dangerous if you’re a small town to have all your eggs in one or two big boxes,” Mitchell said.
With Mitchell’s advice, Our Town Damariscotta members decided the best strategy was a retail building size cap, and they circulated a petition calling for a town vote on one. On the same day the petition’s signatures were certified, Wal-Mart officially announced plans to build the supercenter.
The town’s selectmen wanted the size cap vote to happen at the annual town meeting in June, but again Our Town members feared that would be too late to stop Super Wal-Mart. Instead, Damariscotta’s business leaders petitioned the selectmen for an earlier vote and the date was moved up to March 21.
Our Town Damariscotta then began an intense five-month campaign to drum up support for the cap, lining up speakers, writing columns in the local paper, phoning registered voters, and showing documentaries about Wal-Mart. Kinney says that during the campaign Our Town had over 100 active volunteers, as well as the visible support of the entire downtown district.
“There were signs all over downtown,” she said.
In the midst of the campaign, a Wal-Mart-funded impact study came out saying Wal-Mart would be good for Damariscotta. Our Town members thought the study was fundamentally flawed. “It was so superficial,” Kinney said.
Problems in the study included an incorrect tax rate, anecdotal evidence and a heavy reliance on Wal-Mart-provided data. Our Town Damariscotta funded two counter-studies pointing out the initial study’s flaws, and the first study was amended.
Our Town then successfully deflected a Wal-Mart-funded campaign against the cap in the final weeks leading up to the election. The cap passed easily.
A Service Center Saturated
Ellsworth is in a different position than Damariscotta. Considered a service center for the Downeast region, Ellsworth already has a Wal-Mart and many other large retail chain stores.
But several years ago, some Ellsworth residents grew concerned about the proliferation of big box stores along the southern part of town. This concern intensified when a Home Depot opened and shortly thereafter, four local hardware stores closed.
Then on the heels of Home Depot, Wal-Mart announced its intention to build a Super Wal-Mart in Ellsworth.
A local group called Citizens Organized for Responsible Development (CORD) thought Ellsworth was growing without a blueprint. City officials were still trying to write Ellsworth’s comprehensive plan and big box projects were being greenlighted under the town’s old land ordinances.
CORD members turned in a petition with over 1,200 signatures calling for a 180-day moratorium on all large-scale development in order to give the city time to complete the comprehensive plan.
“That reflects probably better than 50 percent of actual voters,” says Ellsworth city councilor Barbara Reeve.
Reeve, a former CORD member, was one of three CORD-endorsed candidates swept into power in the election following the announcement of the Super Wal-Mart. Shortly after the election, Wal-Mart unexpectedly called off the proposed supercenter. Company officials cited a refusal to pay for the project’s necessary traffic improvements, but locally, many believe CORD’s efforts blocked the supercenter.
CORD dissolved shortly thereafter, especially when the city council finally voted against the proposed moratorium. The comprehensive plan was written two years later.
Super Wal-Mart, the Sequel
Now evidence is mounting that Wal-Mart might be renewing efforts to build a supercenter in Ellsworth.
Though a formal plan has not been submitted, a Massachusetts development firm is working on a proposal to build a 500,000-square-foot shopping center in what is now a wooded parcel across from Home Depot. The anchor store for this shopping center would be a 230,000-square-foot retail store large enough to have both Home Depot and the current Wal-Mart inside it. Community planning activists say that store can only be a Super Wal-Mart.
“Nothing else in the country fits that footprint,” says Daphne Loring, a senior at nearby College of the Atlantic.
Loring has become the defacto spokesperson for a new citizen planning group called Wise Planning for Ellsworth. The group formed shortly after plans for the shopping center went public.
Loring says her group doesn’t want to block Ellsworth’s growth, but help Ellsworth grow smartly.
“We all want what’s best for Ellsworth,” she said.
Though Loring lives in Bar Harbor, she says she’s involved in Wise Planning for Ellsworth because what happens in Ellsworth will affect the entire Downeast region.
“We’re all trying to function in these isolated pockets,” she said. “That’s not sustainable.”
Indeed, the current state-approved plan to accommodate traffic for the supercenter would change traffic patterns coming to and from Mount Desert Island. The plan would break a two-way stretch of Route 3 into two one-way roads, funneling island-bound traffic right through the proposed shopping center. The new traffic pattern would create three additional traffic lights.
Loring predicts a Super Wal-Mart wouldn’t be worth it for Ellsworth in the long run.
“The scale of this development will have huge costs for the city,” she said.
Councilor Reeve agrees. She says the additional costs of added police and infrastructure would more than offset any added tax gain.
“It’s really chasing your tail,” she said.
She added that another giant big-box retail store wouldn’t necessarily bring in additional retail dollars, but rather take business away from downtown businesses.
“In any given community, you reach a saturation point,” Reeve said.
But some in Ellsworth’s city government disagree. Gary Fortier, chairman of Ellsworth’s city council, says a Super Wal-Mart could provide additional tax dollars without putting a strain on the city’s schools.
Fortier understands that such a project would bring with it additional costs to the town. He said this year’s budget calls for an additional police cruiser because of the proposed development, but he thinks the tax gains might offset the costs.
“I’m in favor of controlled retail expansion,” he said. “That’s always a balancing act.”
City planner Michelle Gagnon thinks a Super Wal-Mart would be good for Ellsworth.
“It gives us one more chance to capture more people,” she said.
Gagnon says she shopped at a nearby Super Wal-Mart this last winter and saved $40 a week on groceries, minus gas.
She believes Ellsworth’s downtown won’t suffer because people shop for different things there than they would find at Wal-Mart.
“Ellsworth’s downtown has a different flavor,” she said.
A Wiser Ellsworth
The Ellsworth that first faced a Super Wal-Mart is not the same Ellsworth now.
Barbara Reeve says since the first proposal steps have been taken to plan for the city’s future and protect the downtown district. Since then, the city hired a city planner, completed the comprehensive plan, and won grants to invest in the downtown waterfront.
“I think people are now a little bit wiser,” she said. While that may be true, it remains to be seen whether Ellsworth residents will again have the energy to rally against a Super Wal-Mart. Some fear that the toll of the last campaign might have been too much for Wal-Mart opponents to reorganize now.
Wise Planning’s Loring says the last fight left some bad feelings among CORD members and in the community.
“It was pretty divisive and left some scars,” Loring said.
One Ellsworth business owner and former CORD member agreed to be interviewed for this story on the condition that her name not be used. She said her involvement with CORD hurt her business, and she doesn’t want to jeopardize the livelihood of her employees by speaking out again.
“Certain people in city council and government didn’t look kindly on it,” she said. “[It] was unsettling.”
Though the business owner is taking a supportive role with the new group, she says she’s still exhausted from the last fight. She believes Wal-Mart is fighting a war of attrition against the town.
“We knew they’d be back,” she said. “This is what they do.”
Still, she’s hopeful that Wise Planning for Ellsworth can successfully stand against a possible new Wal-Mart challenge.
“They’ve really made great progress in a short period of time,” she said. But presently, Wise Planning doesn’t yet have a definite plan of action or even a clear leader. Loring says the group is tentatively looking into trying to pass a size cap ordinance.
Councilor Reeve says the timing isn’t bad for such a move, since the city is currently attempting to rewrite its land use ordinances to come into compliance with the comprehensive plan.
“This is actually a good time,” she said. “I really do think there is a window of opportunity.”
The wild card in all this is that no one knows when the development firm will actually apply to build the shopping center. Some are surprised that the firm hasn’t moved faster through the permitting process, especially after gaining approval from the state’s DOT for the project.
Reeve wonders whether the project has hit an unexpected snag that the firm is trying to work around.
Loring worries that the firm might be waiting to see if the legislature passes a bill to limit building project protests. L.D. 1481 would limit action against a planned building project to 75 days after an initial permit is granted. Proponents of the bill say it would help prevent long-term stalling of affordable housing projects, but opponents say the bill is merely a tool for big-box stores to cut off protest. Loring fears the latter.
“It basically sets a clock ticking when the permit is issued,” she said.
Loring says it’s nearly impossible to gather enough signatures in 75 days to call for a land ordinance change.
Reeve says the best way for opponents to head off unwanted big box projects like a Super Wal-Mart is to get involved with city planning now. She says the city always has a dire shortage of people willing to serve on city boards and commissions or run for city councilor.
“We need more people to step up,” Reeve said. “It’s not too late to turn Ellsworth around.”
Coming to a Town Near You
Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance says every Maine community should prepare for a Wal-Mart proposal before it happens.
“Your future is yours if you get out there,” Mitchell said.
Wal-Mart has recently opened a vast distribution warehouse in Lewiston. Mitchell says in order for that warehouse to be profitable, Wal-Mart needs to open up 100 stores in northern New England. Many bordering Vermont and New Hampshire communities have already blocked Wal-Mart expansion, leaving Maine as the most viable option.
“These kinds of proposals — we’re going to see them all across the state of Maine,” she said.
______________________________________________________
Economic Impact of
Wal-Mart on Local Economies
Source: The Institute for Local Self-Reliance