If someone should ask you how things are going in Peachtree City, tell them that we are being “saturated” and “cannibalized.” You can explain to them that those terms are retail jargon used by the “big box” stores like Home Depot and Wal-Mart that are coming to Peachtree City.

The number one question in our city is why do these massive stores want to locate here if they are already so close by in neighboring cities? The second question is what will these big box stores do to the quality of life in Peachtree City? Lastly, the third question is what does our city stand to gain from having the big boxes (boxes - plural, because when you get one the others will follow)?

The big box retailers position so many stores so close together (saturation) to discourage competition. The Peachtree City stores are not being provided for our convenience. Rather, they are an attempt to discourage competition in our marketplace. In fact, their longing to eliminate all competition in our marketplace is so vehement that they are willing to cannibalize market share (take profits) from their own stores close by. In many markets, the big boxes have almost reached the status of monopoly by effectively eradicating the competition. Citizens in Costa Mesa, Calif., fought Wal-Mart because they already had a store in neighboring Santa Ana only three miles away!

Your family might be like mine. We moved to Peachtree City to escape the urban commercial chaos of a large city. Or you might have moved here from “Hometown USA” where you appreciated the quality of life and you just could not settle for anything less.

Another city that appreciates its quality of life, Greenfield, Mass., voted to keep Wal-Mart out because they said, “We're not gaining a store — we're losing our community.” They enjoyed the small town qualities of Greenfield and they knew that once you lose those qualities that Wal-Mart could not sell them back to the residents at any price.

Citizens of Windsor, Calif., fought the big boxes and stated in an impact study that “they had an overwhelming desire to maintain and enhance the unique character and quality of the Windsor community.” To me, this sounds like the approach that Peachtree City should be taking. I would rather be infatuated with my quality of life than saturated by the big boxes.

Think about the 100,000 plus shoppers that invade Fayetteville every shopping day (that is over three times the entire population of Peachtree City). Aesthetically speaking, does “dead architecture” (what big boxes are called in design circles) belong in a nationally recognized planned community?

What is in it for us? The big boxes advertise low prices. They also hand out very low wages. Who will staff the big boxes? Currently, we have industrial sites that are having an extremely difficult time filling $10 per hour, full benefits positions. Employees at the big boxes coming from neighboring counties will cause yet more traffic problems. Perhaps that might bring crime problems also.

Will the city get enough money from the big boxes to make them worthwhile? No. In most cases there is no gain in jobs — only job displacement. Big boxes cause the loss of higher paying local resident jobs, create empty retail space and a loss of local spending power (since their employees are from out of town and the big boxes send the profits to the corporate headquarters and do not spend them here with us).

Listen to what we can reasonably expect from the big boxes ethically and financially. “In Toledo, Ohio, Home Depot's real estate manager presented the city in November of 1997 with a breakdown of the project's fiscal impact on the city. `We estimate this project will pay about $248,000 per year in real property tax' said Tim Platt, Home Depot's Midwest Real Estate Manager.

“Three days later, the city's Commissioner of Economic Development submitted a memo to the members of the City Council repeating the tax revenue impact of `$238,000 to $248,000 per year on completion.'”

However, “residents found that the slightly larger Home Depot a few miles away [in the same city] was only paying the city $153,132.” The residents used the existing Home Depot “tax bill and subtracted out the property taxes already being paid by a series of apartment buildings that Home Depot wanted to destroy, the Westgate Neighbors [residents] showed that the Home Depot tax bill would net out at only $69,430, or 28 percent of what Home Depot had estimated, and city officials had parroted.

“In their exuberance to build, Home Depot had magnified the projected property tax increase three-and-one-half times. The estimated property tax change calculated by the citizens, and based on Lucas County property tax payments, meant that Home Depot's project would translate into a savings of 41 cents per year per voter in Toledo” (“Slam-Dunking Wal-Mart” by Al Norman, p. 76).

Do you think that 41 cents per voter is worth deflating your quality of life?

Some cities like New Paltz, N.Y., have discovered that once you offset the city's expenses concerning a big box development that there can actually be a negative fiscal impact.

Add into the equation the absolute gridlock the increased traffic will cause us due to a halt in federal highway funding along with the fact that the developers do not give a damn and it all adds up to irresponsible development. Please let me know how you feel about this issue. Please get involved.

Sources are “Slam-Dunking Wal-Mart” by Al Norman; “Built from Scratch” by Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank and Bob Andelman; “Sam Walton, Made in America” by Sam Walton and John Huey.

Steve Brown
Peachtree City

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