Small Town Warily Sizes Up a Big Box
In her hometown here on the shore of Lake Champlain, Erin Raymond pays $18 for a package of 30 diapers for her 2-year-old son. If she drives to the nearest Wal-Mart, about 45 minutes south, she can buy 110 diapers for $27.
The 23-year-old convenience store clerk is one of many enthusiastic supporters of plans to bring the big-box retailer to Vermont’s fourth-largest city, where shopping options are limited.
But the project has brought loud opposition from residents who fear that the giant retailer will drive small merchants out of business and suck the economic vitality out of their historic downtown -- especially if it goes on the site the developer is proposing.
These foes are joined by preservationists who worry that Vermont will lose its rural charm if vast retail outlets enter the state. The fight over building a Wal-Mart in St. Albans, about 15 miles south of the Canadian border, gained momentum last year when the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Vermont on its list of endangered sites. It was the first time an entire state had been given this status.
“This is sort of a wake-up call to Vermont,” National Trust President Richard Moe said in Washington. “We’re saying the character of their communities, and I think the character of the state as a whole, is at stake.”
Wal-Mart has four stores in the state, built under the aegis of then-Gov. Howard Dean. The Bennington store, in southwestern Vermont, is about 75,000 square feet. The Wal-Mart in Berlin, near Montpelier, went into a mall in a space occupied by a store that had gone bankrupt. The store in Rutland, in western Vermont, is considered small by Wal-Mart standards. In Williston, about 30 miles south of St. Albans, the Wal-Mart store occupies more than 100,000 square feet and draws shoppers from the northernmost reaches of the state.
Preservationists say they are not trying to bar Wal-Mart Stores Inc. from expanding in the state. Rather, they say they want the company to open smaller stores that do not detract from Vermont’s quaint image.
In St. Albans, the yearlong debate has centered less on whether to open a Wal-Mart than where to put it.
A developer has proposed a store of about 150,000 square feet in a field on the outskirts of this community. The location -- near an interstate highway exit -- is home to a mini-mall with a Staples store and a supermarket, a series of fast-food eateries and a movie complex.
But some say the town would be better served with a smaller store on the primary business street. With about 13,000 residents, St. Albans has a distinctly Victorian ambience. Doctors, lawyers and insurance agencies maintain their offices in proud old houses. Most of the businesses on Main Street are in small clapboard or red-brick buildings from the 1800s, when St. Albans bustled with train traffic.
In Rutland, Wal-Mart moved into a defunct dime store on the town’s main street, and some here say a similar approach should be taken in St. Albans.
“If Wal-Mart located in downtown St. Albans, that would be a perfect solution,” said Paul Bruhn, executive director of the Preservation Trust of Vermont.
Although the developer seems determined to put the store on the outskirts of town, Bill Nihan, a member of the St. Albans governing council, called Bruhn’s position thoughtful and appropriate for a community that 10 years ago successfully mobilized against another plan to build a Wal-Mart.
He noted that in St. Albans, “people still go to the local stores because they know the owners. They chitchat while they do business. From my own perspective, I much prefer to buy locally -- even large items like my television, my washer and my dryer -- because I know the people I am doing business with, and I know that I get continued service.”
Perry Cooper, an electrical engineer and soundman for music groups, said that this highly personal way of doing business was one of the reasons he continued to live in the St. Albans area.
“I shop with people whose names I know from talking to them over the counter,” he said. “I see them repeatedly, and I like doing business that way.”
Cooper said he would oppose any large store, either in downtown St. Albans or on the proposed site on the edge of town. But he said he saved special antipathy for Wal-Mart.
“I am opposed to their business model, their personnel policy, their subsidies, the impact they put on public services -- and the fact that the money that they take out of the economy, they send overnight to Arkansas,” he said. “It is terrible for Vermont. It is a net outflow of cash.”
Foes of the big retailer elsewhere in the country often use such arguments when Wal-Mart wants to come into their communities. But earlier this month, that line of reasoning did not stop voters in Bennington from rejecting an ordinance that prevented an existing Wal-Mart from expanding beyond 75,000 square feet. In supporting the expansion, the Bennington voters defied city officials who had voiced many of the same qualms heard in St. Albans.
Ken Dolan said he was untroubled by the effect Wal-Mart might have on the aesthetics -- not to mention traffic -- in his hometown. He said St. Albans needed a big, low-priced retail store because “there’s nothing here. You can’t buy pots and pans. Where do you go for cheap, everyday clothes?”
Dolan, 59, is retired. He said he had trouble getting to the nearest Wal-Mart in Williston. “You got a lot of elderly people here who can’t get out of town,” he said.
Rita Reed, 47, works in a food store in St. Albans in part because she can walk there from her house. She said her car doesn’t run well, making it impossible for her to travel long distances to save money on shopping.
“I don’t care if it’s a big, ugly store,” she said. “Look at all the old, rundown buildings in St. Albans. Nobody seems to care about them.”
Rhoda Washington, Wal-Mart’s community affairs manager for the East Coast, said from her office in Washington that she was unfamiliar with the St. Albans situation because she had been with the company for only three months.
Town officials in St. Albans have asked for further studies on the traffic and environmental implications of the potential Wal-Mart site. A year of regular hearings on the issue has so polarized the community that city leaders now close some of the gatherings to the public.
There is no time frame for an approval process, so the discussions could continue indefinitely. Even if St. Albans gives the Wal-Mart developer a green light, the project must pass a statewide development evaluation -- a hurdle that could take months.
Meanwhile, sculptor Sue Prent said she and others in St. Albans who formed a group called Northwest Citizens for Responsible Growth would continue to battle Wal-Mart. She said putting a store the size of three football fields in a town like St. Albans was “corporate overkill,” and dismissed the proposed design of the store as a “concrete bunker.”
“The buildings are ugly and horrible,” Prent said. “Vermont is America’s backyard, and who wants that kind of stuff in their backyard?”
