Increasingly, Voters Decide Fate of Big Stores
Development measures backed or opposed by Home Depot, Ikea and Wal-Mart will be on the ballot today in five California cities struggling to decide if such “big-box” stores will make life better by creating jobs or worse by adding to suburban crowding.
The most expensive political battle is being waged here in Mountain View, where both sides have employed professional political consultants and raised nearly $700,000 combined in campaign funds. Last week, the side that favors letting Home Depot build on the site of an abandoned department store mailed six-minute promotional video tapes to about 14,000 voter households. The videos include testimonials in support of the store from a City Council member, law enforcement officials and the head of the local National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.
Increasingly in California, where interest groups and corporations have wide power to bring local matters to a public vote, planning and zoning decisions traditionally decided by elected officials have become a matter of hard-fought political campaigns--with price tags to match.
This is especially true when it comes to the so-called big-box retail stores, whose moves into new neighborhoods are often controversial. On one hand, they can offer communities the prospect of hundreds of jobs and increased sales tax revenue. But they are sometimes reviled by local residents who believe such mega-stores cause increased traffic and have the potential to overwhelm local businesses.
Just to the north in the Bay Area city of East Palo Alto, voters will decide the fate of a controversial plan to build a 300,000-square-foot Ikea furniture store. In addition to the Bay Area towns, Southern California voters in Agoura Hills will decide a measure that would block any store greater than 60,000 square feet, an initiative aimed at quashing a proposed Home Depot. And residents of Calexico, in Imperial County, will vote on a measure backed by Wal-Mart to overturn limits on the floor space that large retailers are allowed to dedicate to grocery sales.
In the Central Valley city of Reedley, voters will also find a measure on today’s ballot aimed at stopping another proposed Wal-Mart even though the Bentonville, Ark., corporation has withdrawn plans to build there. The ballots were printed before the withdrawal occurred.
In communities around the country, these measures are making their way to voters for two reasons, according to Al Norman, the founder of an organization called Sprawl Busters, which is dedicated to fighting big-box retail stores. “Sometimes developers see it as an opportunity to buy their way past a recalcitrant city council,” he said. “On the other hand, these kinds of initiatives are proving attractive to citizens groups who feel that their elected officials are unresponsive.”
In Mountain View’s case, Home Depot began collecting signatures to put its proposal on the ballot when it seemed the City Council would balk at plans for the new store. Eager to head off the expense of holding a special election, the council then voted to put the measure on today’s ballot rather than wait for Home Depot to round up support.
Norman’s Web site chronicles nearly two dozen big-box electoral battles over the last four years, from Topsham, Maine, to Huntington Beach, where a 150,000-square-foot Wal-Mart was approved two years ago with 54% of the vote.
There are no conclusive studies on the percentage of stores that win approval from voters.
The high-stakes electoral battle over individual stores “is going to be an increasing phenomenon,” said public relations executive Jon Rubin, who managed a successful campaign to build a Costco in the city of South San Francisco in 1999. “City governments want the money that such stores bring in, but they don’t want to be accused of not being responsible planners.”
Ironically, though, some policy experts say a community’s hands-on approach can at times make responsible planning more difficult by tackling the issue in piecemeal fashion, store by store, instead of looking at the larger picture.
“I waiver between two opposite ends,” said public policy professor Al Sokolow, a specialist in land-use politics at UC Davis. “It’s great that we have this opportunity for citizen participation, but on the other hand it undercuts the representative process in which local government is supposed to operate.”
Robert S. Lawrence, a former planning director for Mountain View agrees. He opposes the proposed Home Depot, but said, “Whether or not we have the store is not the issue. We have this elaborate planning process now, which is a pretty sophisticated way for the city to make its own decisions about what the community is going to look like. This proposal really just overrides that.”
Lawrence, who led the city’s Planning Department in the 1960s and 1970s, said there have been plenty of times in Mountain View’s history when the planning process has managed to stop unwanted development.
Sometimes, however, city councils “are not able to withstand the pressures and the influence and the money that the big-box stores are able to throw at a moment’s notice,” said Albert Abrams, who works with a group opposing the Agoura Hills Home Depot. “I think it’s terrific that people in towns like Agoura Hills have the right to choose their own destiny.”
For the stores, the ability to expand into new markets is crucial in driving revenues. Home Depot opened 204 stores last year, and reported record net earnings of $3 billion. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, announced in October that it plans to open about 185 super centers, and 50 smaller stores domestically this year. The company also plans to open as many as 55 Sam’s Club stores in the United States.
“Obviously, we would prefer to be able to go through the process of doing this the typical way, by going through the city council,” said Peter Kanelos, Wal-Mart’s community affairs manager for California. “It is more expensive to go through an election, but when it happens we respect the citizens’ ability to make decisions based on the democratic process. It’s just a cost of doing business.”
