Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 13, 1994 TAG: 9409130038
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NICK GILLESPIE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Indeed, the nation's largest retailer has met vociferous opposition from residents in states as far-flung as Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, New York and Ohio.
New England, however, seems to be the real bastion of anti-Wal-Mart sentiment. Last year, residents of Westford, Mass., successfully kept Wal-Mart out. Citizens of another Bay State town, Greenfield, held a referendum on the matter and decided (by a nine-vote margin) to banish Wal-Mart from their city limits.
That kind of thinking is even stronger in Vermont, the only state in the country that doesn't yet boast (or bemoan) a Wal-Mart outlet. A protest group called Vermonters Against the Wal holds demonstrations around the state in hopes of keeping things that way.
In 1993, the National Trust for Historic Preservation declared the entire state to be endangered by what it derided as ``Sprawl-Mart,'' and the state's governor, Democrat Howard Dean, traveled to Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., to discuss the company's plans for his state. And earlier this year, proposals for sites in the towns of St. Albans and Williston were stalled by extensive protests.
``We're not done yet,'' anti-Wal-Mart activist John Finn, a former state senator, told The Washington Post. ``We're going to keep fighting the buggers.''
While it's clear that some people hate the ``buggers,'' the reasons for that sentiment are less obvious - and more than a bit bemusing. Some anti-Wal-Mart forces argue that the retailer will inevitably drive local merchants under, thereby turning traditional shopping districts into ghost towns. (Wal-Mart usually opens its doors a few miles outside a city's downtown.)
Others argue that Wal-Mart stores will draw so many customers from so far around that traffic jams will overburden rural roads. For still others, it's an aesthetic issue. One Massachusetts activist quoted in Time magazine disparaged a proposed store as an ``antiseptic, big white monster. It was like letting a 300-pound gorilla into your living room.''
Those are all debatable - if dubious - points. A Wal-Mart store tends to increase total economic activity in a given area and, according to business analysts, existing merchants can enjoy continued success by providing goods and services not offered by the discounter. And Wal-Mart typically pays for road improvements at the same time it broadens the local and state tax bases. As for the aesthetics of retailing, few sights are more pleasing than a busy store.
What really galvanizes the anti-Wal-Mart activism is a faux nostalgia for the way things used to be.
``I think we have to go back to the way towns were developed in the [1700s] and 1800s,'' the leader of the Williston opposition told The Post. That's why the anti-Wal-Marters make such a big show of protecting ``Main Street, USA'' and ``small-town quality of life.'' Judging from their rhetoric, you might guess they live in a horse-and-buggy America held over from a Currier and Ives engraving. But that's hardly the case.
Consider Vermont: The state may be free of Wal-Mart, but Kmart and other mass retailers have already set up shop. Williston, far from being a pristine land of mom-and-pop stores, has an industrial park, a Ponderosa restaurant, and a Skateland RollaRink. St. Albans counts a McDonald's and Burger King among its restaurants.
Not surprisingly, anti-Wal-Marters never address the basic reason for the chain's popularity: It offers a wide selection of name-brand goods at rock-bottom prices.
People aren't forced to shop at Wal-Mart - they choose to do so because they often get more for their money. (The fact that the typical Wal-Mart store employs several hundred people doesn't hurt, either.) As one company spokesman put it, ``There are literally scores of ... communities who would give their eyetooth for a Wal-Mart store.''
In fact, there are some such places in Vermont itself. Residents and elected officials in St. Johnsbury, an economically depressed town near the New Hampshire border, are squarely behind the latest attempt to locate a Wal-Mart in Vermont.
The proposed store - which would highlight regional goods - would be in a downtown location and 25 percent smaller than the average Wal-Mart, to comply with the state's strict land-use regulations. The concept has even received support from Gov. Dean.
While it's far from clear what, if anything, Vermont would lose by allowing Wal-Mart in, it's clear that St. Johnsbury-area residents would gain at least two obvious benefits currently in short supply in the Green Mountain State: quality goods at low cost and new employment opportunities.
That's a bargain that even a nostalgic can understand.
Nick Gillespie is assistant editor of Reason, a Los Angeles-based magazine of social and political commentary.
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