Voice of the People

Don’t be fooled. Big box stores do nothing to help or enhance local economies. When Wal-Mart (or any other big box retail giant) arrives, it hits the town with the force of 100 new businesses opening at once. It is Hurricane Big Box.

Sprawl masquerades as a form of economic development and as being somehow unavoidable. This so-called “inevitability” claimed by municipal officials really just conceals their accountability toward the public. Sprawl is only inevitable when the people allow it to be.

What IS inevitable is the devastating by-products of retail sprawl. It destroys the economic and environmental value of land; encourages an inefficient land-use pattern that is very expensive to serve; fosters redundant competition between local governments and an economic war of tax incentives; forces costly infrastructure development at the edge of towns; causes disinvestment from established core commercial areas; requires the use of public tax support for revitalizing rundown core areas; degrades the visual, aesthetic character of local communities; lowers the value of other commercial and residential property, reducing public revenues; and weakens the sense of place and community cohesiveness.

We already are over-built and over-stored and face many of these problems in Duneland. How much of the same merchandise does a community need from already superfluous big box stores that currently exist within a 20 mile radius from Chesterton? And it’s about time we begin to participate in and enhance the locally owned and produced economy before visiting those stores.

The massive glut of capricious construction in our precious Duneland should raise serious environmental and economic issues among its residents such as the impact of traffic on air quality standards; the threat to water quality and aquifers in an area where most residents use wells; the mismanagement of storm water and sewage, already a problem in Duneland; the reduction of wildlife habitat; the expense of costly new infrastructure; the homogenization of rural landscapes; the overdependence on the automobile and superhighways; the loss of open space and unique natural areas; and the destruction/deterioration of historic commercial centers of local economies and downtown shopping areas. Is all of this damage worth the presumed convenience of more big box stores?

We need to re-think local economy and how the negative outweigh any positive effects that the massive invasion of redundant, overstuffed retail stores have on it and our environment.

Sincerely,

Patrick B. Moody

Posted 11/20/2007