Ticky-Tacky Big Boxes

By Jane Holtz Kay

Able to swallow vast acres at a single gulp, to sap neighborhoods and reduce main streets and downtowns to shells of themselves, the Superstore has now hit the biggest main street of all, New York City. A proposal now on the city's agenda would ease their way into a metropolis long resistant to this attack.

For the first time in the city's history of kowtowing to developers, however, the Big Box, has aroused opposition among city officials. Before the end of the month, the City Council could reject the measure to allow giant discount warehouses and, hence, ward off the shopper-snatchers.

Image courtesy of Andy Singer

They have their work cut out for them. Mammoth discount outlets like Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Costco have drawn Americans to mass purchases in so many small and suburban communities that only urban America is left to colonize. Like the malls which pulled an earlier generation to the suburbs, these shopping-cart stores offer cheap goods in bulk. Like the malls of the sixties, these megastores of the eighties and nineties are financed by public infrastructure and highway subsidies, robbing urban Peter to bankroll exurban Paul. In so doing, they have siphoned off the vitality of the nation's cores to locations on the off the exit ramp, eroding urban economic, civic and retail life.

Now its New York's turn. In the almost two years since Mayor Rudolph Giuliani proposed permitting an estimated 57 of these 200,000-square foot plus behemoths, without the communities' right to review, opposition has arisen from storeowners and urban activists. Here, as in other cities under siege, such out-of-scale emporia as the new Home Depot in Queens and those planned for New York's five boroughs, negate planning and drain cities of their very citiness--the complex web of shops, restaurants and small scale enterprises that support the vitality and diversity of street life and make urban institutions viable.

Understandably, concern has grown that, for all their vaunted economies of scale and claim of jobs, these Superstores skimp on worker wages and, lately, have a short shelf life that leaves abandoned buildings and wasted sites when they depart.

Awareness has increased that the mammoth discount warehouse is a threat to yet one more essential aspect of New York City's economy--its industrial base. Tucked away in drab buildings on the fringes where the Superstores would settle, the true work of the city is hammered out. No glamor here. No pizzazzy post-modern facades. Still, these sites hold the life-support system for the metropolis: the sewing machine repair shops that serve the garment industry, the Fed Ex garages that parcel out packages to business, the shops for Broadway's stage sets, the printers, the book binders, Brooklyn's beer and sugar makers. The Cinderella landscape generates 4l billion dollars worth of economic activity and 330,000 jobs in 12,000 manufacturing establishments.

It is here that the Superstore or so-called "category killer" outlet could be a real killer, undermining the city's potential for more and better jobs by raising the rent and exterminating the existing ones.

This is no new story. Mayor Giuliani's work to cripple genuine planning in behalf of Big Boxmongers is, in fact, a staple of political practice as decreed by real estate interests since the 1980's age of the developers. Instead of examining real needs or framing broader plans, the dealmakers dictate. The city subsidizes the stadium or the convention hall; funds the upscale, overscaled residences and downtown towers that congest and erode any real urbanity or plan. (See Trump; tk ?Oct.l995)

In this case, however, the quick-fix capitalists' plan to lay out the red carpet for supermarket and clothing marketeers provoked the first opposition in years. For once, the City Council didn't rubber stamp let 'er rip building. It took a first vote away from freewheeling, developer-driven megaprojects. The fight was engaged. Now it remains to see if Councilmembers hold on to their somewhat tighter measures, or cave.

Meanwhile, financial, insurance and real estate interests and their anti-planning, anti-regulation allies (not usually noted for their poverty-belt platforms) defend their superstores with the assertion that Big Box bargains keep urban consumption in the city and help the needy save money at the cash register.

Better ask the folks who don't have the money to afford the $6000-a-year car necessary to transport the "savings" from, say, the Fairway at the edge of Harlem. Black not ..... have access.... limits... k-mart on 14th; walk-in... urbanisty; alexander; power urban retail....; Consult the urban storeowners who are afraid of losing their customers. Or the neighbors who want to hold their local shops, along with the dense streets and lively communities that keep the city alive.

Examine the streets themselves where words like "loiter, loll, chat" are alive; where the coffee shop, the casual trip, the conversational exchange of the neighborhood depend on foot traffic, not 2000 pounds of rolling steel. The real estate interests who oppose them demonstrated their uninterest in that close-packed, congenial public space by lining the pockets of Mayor Giuliani in the last election. Giuliani favors--but, of course--their cause. It's cheap food versus a paycheck; versus, some say, the life of the city streets.

Cityfolks who junk city planning to permit the vast and faceless warehouses should resist the seductions of the suburb-slickers. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, knowing witness to their city-busting effect across the country, advocates staving of such development as city-busting by "biting down like a bulldog," fending and breaking away from "formula development."

Crusaders who care about their villages, their town centers, and their city cores, have successfully fought off the Superstore charlatans, rallying 'round the anti-Superstore cause. Hopefully, their Big Apple sisters can similarly resist the Big Box quackery.

This article appeared in the Nation.

Back to Articles Index