Can someone summarize for me the benefits the city provides to a big box store such as Target?

It would be great to find a way to provide the same benefits en masse to the businesses located in downtown. I know this would be a challenge to design, since it would involve the variety of building owners, business owners, and historic buildings. Also, one would have to locate downtown on a map - though this could be solved by identifying a core area that’s 100% downtown for 100% benefits, then a ring outside that for 75% benefits and another ring for 50% benefits - these areas would then need to be re-evaluated periodically, such as every two years.

Such a plan could help rebalance the unfair advantage box stores have. Not entirely, since it wouldn’t account for cheaper products, transport, etc, but it would certainly be a start. The downtown stores shouldn’t miss out on benefits from the city just because they’re smaller.

I also continue to believe that the city should re-work all the steps required to make a change to a building/sidewalk area so as to streamline this into a one-stop-shopping model. All the discussion and decisions should be made at one time, and be available at least once a month so owners can plan accordingly and know when the process will be complete.

The point being, if a company wants to be in a specific market, they will adjust almost anything to the requests of that regulating gov’t unit. But that gov’t unit has to make the request/demand to express their vision for their community. This is not business UNfriendly; this is saying if you think you are going to make money in our market, we would like to be partners, not victims.

Until recently, my parents lived in Alton Bay, New Hampshire. In the neighboring “big city” of Alton, there is a McDonald’s. It does not have yellow arches, in fact, it has no arches. It is a small, grey clapboard, colonial-style, house-like structure, complete with mullioned windows and wooden shutters.

I do not think that Resistance is futile. I believe that finding, and learning from, alternative histories may the real challenge.

Winning the struggle for architectural style is not enough, however. Many of the once-familiar local purveyors of lobster rolls are now gone and one of the last remaining options for this regionally popular item is the drive-thru of the little grey McDonald’s.

- Ross

You are correct about the long term, Northfield WILL “be here” the question is, in what form, and is it the form we as residents desire.

How much do we want to control our destiny? What is our responsibility to control our destiny?

As far as us learning from the experiences of other communities, do you have any stats on which communities have successfully fought this trend? I just don’t know of any. It appears that if there is anything we can learn, to quote a Star Trek line, resistance is futile. This doesn’t help the situation with the Lansings, but at least we may be in good company.

I guess I do know of one city that has been successful in exerting a standard on all the developement in it- Sedona, AZ. If you have been there, you soon realize that every building in town is the same color red. It is designed to help the buildings blend into the surrounding landscape. It is even referred to as Sedona red. In fact, the McDonalds there is the only one in the country that does not have yellow arches on it. The city forced them to make them a sage green. Pretty good, huh?

The larger perspective is the effect of people’s changed shopping habits, and more specifically the effect that has on the economics of a small town.

We’ve talked about this on another thread, but the tax rates in the DT have gone sky-high. The tax bill on my/our 4K squarefootprint building on Division st. is just under $20,000. That means that the tax portion for EACH of the two commercial spaces is approx. $700. per month… just the tax portion, remember.

One reason the taxes are so high downtown is that the assessor averages ALL the commercial property sales together, whether it’s a $350million commercial industrial property on south highway 3, or a $350 thousand small building downtown. That is just one part of the economic piece.

Another part of the economic piece is that banks, medical offices, dentists, optometrists, when they need to improve their physical spaces, have difficulty finding creative ways to do that in the DT, so they all move south, and take a lot of volume of necessary daily trips out of the core. Some smaller franchise/corporate businesses (H.R.Block comes to mind) who were in the DT, are “forced” by their corporate bosses to relocate to the highway, as being the preferred “modern” location with the most traffic.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And its all about SCALE.

So it starts with a poor development decision, one that weakens the core of the community, and after years of struggle to innovate/respond to the changes, the more traditional business models start to fail. Then the stress of functioning in that battle mode, plus the added personal stress of a, IMHO, adversarial political process full of personal accusation, ridicule,and perceived not adjudicated blame, take a final toll.

You’re right , WM., its a very complicated process. But why could we, Northfield, have not learned from the thousands of examples all over the country?

Anyway, the reason Iam posting is really to tell about how China is also going to be using our big ticket items, like GE’s commercial talks about the rural population of China falling in love with GE’s medical equipment…prolly one unit is worth a month of one Target store shopping totals.

WalMart is even making an attempt to go green Fewer and fewer of it’s products are from China now and a thrust to buy local foods and goods is afoot.

I don’t know why it’s still either/or, as in either Cubbies or Just Foodies. As it can easily be both/and as in both Tarjay, Presently We R Perfect, and Digs In, iykwim.

One: is the military is a big percentage of the US budget and is largely paid for through income tax. On a risk-benefit basis one would have to think a solid 50-75% of the military purpose if to secure energy resources (oil & gas). If these costs were accounted for by an energy tax rather than an income tax then Target’s business model would look very different.

Two: a huge percentage of Target’s product comes from countries like China that are not democracies. Some argue that enriching dictatorships somehow makes them become open and liberal societies. I subscribe to the theory they just become rich dictators and rich dictators become very costly to society over time (see Iraq).

I don’t know that these issues are beyond Northfield’s control - if every town & city used that as an excuse then we end up with a really warped society.

The good news is the Internet is spawning new products and services so fast that “mass” merchandisers will be niched apart in short order. The bad news is no funky cool restaurants or condo renovations are going reuse the mass merchant shells when they vacate.

David H…I agree that there is some ‘causality’ from the consequences of the political debate with regard to business failure.

But just consider that there may be other factors in play. And that these factors might be just as, or more, important than the political factors. Every business has not failed downtown…although Target offers a version of almost everything that can be purchased in downtown shops. Econo and Just Foods are open even though Cub is going great guns. Applebey’s lot is full while there are 7 or 8 downtown eateries that seem to be hanging in there. In fact there are new businesses that have opened downtown. How can all this happen if the chains eat everything alive?

Conversely…If Target were to close, would that be attributed to solely a vibrant, thriving downtown?

There is much more going on here than politics.

The court case that followed was a test case for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is why they joined with an amicus brief. Their position was that a highway development that rivaled the downtown in the square footage of retail would eventually destroy the economics of the downtown.

Thanks to the dedication of retailers like Bob Jacobsen and Lee Lansing, it took longer than the NTHP predicted, but it has happened. And John is correct in saying that it is a national trend. And yes, Dundas’s highway development has been a threat to our downtown, and WILL continue to be.

Bright- No need to apologize. I’ll answer your questions privately, though.

Could you tell us a little bit more about the mercator .com reference as
I had been unable to find where they located the article to which you referred. TIA.

Bright- I am not Jewish. The three paragraphs I quoted were by a Jewish author. Sorry I did not make that more clear. I have such a hard time getting the block-quotes function to work. I know that would have differentiated the article better.

You also said,”To Mayor Lansing and his family, I pray and hope all will end well and a new door opens to you this very day.” Amen! I second that prayer!

To Mayor Lansing and his family, I pray and hope all will end well and a new door opens to you this very day.