Doing business together

As Maine’s manufacturing base slides offshore, Bangor has seen an influx of mega-retail businesses. These stores have provided some substitute for lost employment and provide a generally welcome array of consumer goods at competitive prices.

However, research shows that these stores also create trade-offs for our local economy which affect not just shoppers, but also businesses, workers and taxpayers; that is, all of us. As the nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart has been the most scrutinized; however, many studies have looked at the impact of other ” big-box development.” as well. Here’s a sampling:

Concord, N.H., roughly Bangor’s size, added 2.8 million square feet of new large-scale development over 10 years, yet experienced a 19 percent drop in overall tax assessment, resulting in the need for an increase in sales tax. The decline was attributed to the shutdown of local businesses and a fall in local property values.

A study of about 1,750 counties across the country notes that the number of new jobs initially created by a new Wal-Mart is soon offset by the closure, downsizing or layoffs by other area businesses, many of whose jobs were better paying.

A study in Barnstable, Mass., also roughly Bangor’s size, found that large retail development cost the city $468 per 1,000 square feet, due to increased fire, police and road requirements, compared with specialty retail stores contributing $326 per 1,000 square feet to the municipal budget.

An Economic Policy Institute study notes that the money Wal-Mart claims to save the average family by its low prices is balanced by the depressed wages that it creates for all retail workers throughout the region. These wages are more needed to pay for services like healthcare, housing and transportation not for sale at Wal-Mart than for goods like food, apparel, household goods, and furniture which are.

A study in Midcoast Maine by the Institute for Local Self Reliance found that local stores return three times more of its revenue to the local community than do national chain stores, which both buy its supplies and send its profits out of state.

How might all these findings affect Bangor, as we become a superstore magnet for the area? And how do we evaluate such research alongside our sense that “everyday low prices,” are in fact something which most families appreciate and which those most hurt by our economy often depend on? Moreover, studies or no studies, when the Brewer Wal-Mart opened, it was flooded within a day with hundreds of job applications. Doesn’t this suggest that for many area residents, Wal-Mart employment looks attractive?

Finally, should the wider community impacted by large-scale retail development even have anything to say about what businesses decide to locate and build here? Or should this simply be a matter to be decided between interested stores, developers, and our local code enforcers?

We’re not looking for a definitive answers to these questions, but we have looked hard for a place to at least ask them. No such place exists. The Bangor Planning Board, generally only considers whether applications violates any provision of the current zoning codes. The Bangor City Council has never considered such questions as those above.

So it turns out that all of us in Bangor have no forum to ask important questions about the mega-retail developments that have a potent impact on our local economy and our community life. These questions, paradoxically, are too big to show up on anybody’s radar. This is no one’s fault, but to all of our detriment.

The Eastern Maine Fair Maine Economy Commission is a first step towards creating a place where people can discuss big-box development issues that aren’t being aired anywhere else. The commission is a panel of citizens with some background in, law, economics, labor, local business or environment. It will hold three community forums, in Bucksport (7 p.m. Sept. 25, Alamo Theater), Ellsworth (7 p.m Sept. 28, City Hall), and Bangor (7 p.m. Oct. 5, Wellman Commons on Bangor Theological Seminary’s old campus).

Its charge is to listen to what a wide spectrum of community members has to say, both positive and negative, about how they see the impact of “big box” stores on our community. In light of what it hears, the commission will examine strategies for strengthening local economies.

Peace through Interamerican Community Action has initiated these hearings based on the premise that the issues involved in big-box development extend past consumer choice, developer prerogative and code compliance. There exists a broader array of costs and benefits experienced by the whole community. Our bias is that everyone affected should have a chance to share his or her concerns.

So we invite people to speak and people to listen: shoppers, local employees, small businesses, large businesses, city officials, developers, taxpayers, and citizens. We’re not seeking expert witnesses here, but rather people with their own slants on these issues, with their own questions as well as answers to share. Let’s start a community-wide conversation that looks at how we all “do business” together.

Dennis Chinoy works with PICA, a Bangor community group with a 20-year history of seeking to build strong communities at home and across borders.