Big-box brawler

Big-box brawler
By Kate Bucklin
The Forecaster
October 2006

Stacy Mitchell fights the nation’s mega-retailers from Munjoy Hill

PORTLAND – When the Bayside Neighborhood Association wanted to know more about the possibility of a big-box retailer locating in the community, it didn’t have to look far for an expert to explain options for fighting such a development.

Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, lives on Munjoy Hill. She grew up in Portland, graduated from Deering High School in 1991, and moved back to the city about five years ago from St. Paul, Minn. When she moved back, the institute let her take her job with her.

Mitchell travels the country helping communities develop land policy aimed at keeping mega-retailers in check. She also works with those groups to develop economic plans aimed at creating sustainable local businesses. She has been concentrating on the impacts of big-box stores since 1999, when she wrote a small piece on the subject called “Hometown Advantage.”

“It mushroomed into a full-time job,” Mitchell said during a recent interview. The institute created a public policy wing called New Rules, which concentrates on the need to change current public policy because, Mitchell said, those rules often undermine the local economy.

Since 2001, the organization has helped defeat about 200 proposals by retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster.

Mitchell said she has seen interest in sustaining local businesses accelerate each year since she began working for the cause. More research is being done on the impact of mega-retailers, too. A recent study asserts that on the average, a community will lose 180 jobs if a Wal-Mart store moves in.

“Locally owned business also keeps a lot more money locally than a Wal-Mart or a Starbucks,” said Mitchell, because local businesses tend to use local accountants, suppliers and banks.

The most effective way to combat big-box retail is with strong community groups, Mitchell said. While she has worked with communities all over the nation, she said the small Maine town of Damariscotta is a great example of a dynamic local group that successfully fought Wal-Mart. Damariscotta passed an ordinance restricting the size of retailers wanting to move into the town.

“Wal-Mart spent a lot of money and they still lost,” she said, “thanks to a smart and tenacious community group.”

Local action groups are not just working to stop mega-retailers. Mitchell said there are several dozen independent business advocacy groups in the country, including the newly established Portland Independent Business Alliance, which has launched a Buy Local campaign.

“In Austin, Texas, you can see a strong local business (alliance),” Mitchell said. While strip malls have historically housed chain stores, she said, now “shopping center developers in Austin are coming to us for help getting local businesses into their buildings.”For the last year and a half, Mitchell has been compiling her knowledge and experience of mega-retailers for a book. “Big Box Swindle,” published by Beacon Press, will hit local book stores later this month. The book explores the evolution of the big-box store and the subsequent decline in independent businesses.

Case studies of the impact these giant retailers have had on small-town America are accompanied by examples of what Michell says the government has done to help the Home Depots and Wal-Marts of the world grow.

The book also highlights communities that have successfully thwarted big boxes in their towns and lays groundwork for communities looking to develop their own anti-big-box land use policies.

Kate Bucklin can be reached at 781-3661, ext. 106 or kbucklin@theforecaster.net.