In the 15 years since Greenfield voters famously turned back a Wal-Mart proposed for their town, the Big Box battle has played out time and again across the Valley, with mixed results.
While the communities and corporations vary, the arguments are strikingly similar. Proponents tout the project's economic benefits, pointing to the jobs and tax revenue it would create as well as the convenience it would offer local shoppers. Opponents warn that big boxes bring low-paying jobs and threaten the viability of existing smaller competitors, while drawing money out of the local economy to faroff corporate headquarters.
The latest version of the fight is now playing out in Holyoke, where city officials are considering whether to allow a Lowe's home improvement store on Whiting Farms Road, just a short distance from the Ingleside Mall. On Jan. 6, the City Council is scheduled to vote on a proposal to rezone the 18-acre parcel, now owned by Holyoke Gas & Electric, from "industrial" use to "general business," opening the way for a Connecticut-based developer to build the store. The Council's ordinance committee and the city Planning Board have already voted in favor of the zone change.
In Holyoke, the battle is being drawn along the usual lines. But given the precarious state of the city's economic health, on each side there's the sense that the stakes are extraordinarily high.
*
Doris Ransford sees the Lowe's project as an answer to some of Holyoke's most basic needs. "We're a very poor community that needs jobs and needs growth from the private sector," she says.
Ransford is president of the Holyoke Chamber of Commerce; she's also coordinator of Grow Holyoke (www.growholyoke.org), a recently formed group made up of the Chamber and local businesses and residents. While the Lowe's proposal has been the group's first issue—supporters wearing "Grow Holyoke" buttons packed a recent Council meeting—it has a broader agenda than promoting this one project, Ransford says. "We just started this effort to put some support behind projects that we see are good for Holyoke," she says. "Usually all you hear are people who are negative, and the pro people are in the background somewhere."
Ransford says she understands the anxiety of small business owners who fear Lowe's will be their demise. "There's competition; there's no doubt," she says. "But I also know that myself and other people are still going to go to Highland Hardware." And, she adds, Holyoke shoppers are already bypassing city stores to shop at the various Lowe's and Home Depots in surrounding communities; a Holyoke Lowe's would keep them in town.
Ransford believes that Lowe's would bring some immediate relief: new jobs (80 full-time and 65 part-time, according to the company) in a city whose unemployment rate is pushing 8 percent, and a projected $350,000 in new tax revenue for a city where the tax base has steadily shrunk, increasing pressure on remaining businesses and homeowners. In light of those realities, she says, "We really need to do everything we can to bring in new businesses. That doesn't mean we do it indiscriminately, by any means. But we believe the Lowe's project is a good one."
*
Not everyone, of course, agrees. Among the project's vocal opponents are City Councilors Helen Norris and Elaine Pluta, who argue that the store would hurt small independent businesses and create traffic problems. (Ransford and other proponents contend traffic plans brought in by the store would, in fact, improve traffic in the area.)
At-large City Councilor Rebecca Lisi believes that Holyoke can, and should, do better than accept the Lowe's proposal. Like the project's proponents, she agrees that the city needs jobs and a strong tax base. But, she wrote in an op-ed she submitted to the Advocate, the city also "is in need of comprehensive economic development," and Lowe's does not fit the bill. "Holyoke needs to be an assertive player as opposed to a passive recipient, always desperate for proposals from outside the community," Lisi wrote.
Lisi was not available at deadline for additional comment. But in her op-ed, she likened the Lowe's project to the moribund K-Mart Plaza at the corner of Whiting Farms and Northampton Street; both, she wrote, amount to "strip mall" development that comes at the expense of the city's struggling downtown.
"A lack of investment in downtown is the source of our collapsing economy, as small businesses go under and Holyoke's building stock falls into disrepair," Lisi wrote. "The Lowe's proposal is a project. It is neither a plan nor part of a plan for economic success in Holyoke. It is a stand-alone enterprise seemingly removed from any larger vision of what is best for the city as whole. … Any decision that diverts badly needed resources away from downtown is nothing more than a shortsighted project going after short-term dollars.
"The Lowe's project comes not only at the expense of the industrial and residential neighbors at Whiting Farms [Road], but also at the expense of small business owners and the Latino community who have been holding a place for economic development downtown," Lisi continued. "Our city can no longer sustain decisions based on narrow and divisive self-interests."
*
Holyoke Mayor Mike Sullivan is high on the Lowe's project, pointing, like other supporters, to the expected tax revenue and job creation.
Sullivan objects to the argument that retail jobs like those at Lowe's are too low-paying to be significant. Higher-paying, skilled jobs "oftentimes … are not the kinds of jobs the working class in the city of Holyoke are prepared to accept," he says. "They need entry-level jobs, and they can grow from within."
Sullivan also objects to the contention that development in the Ingleside area will come at the expense of downtown. Holyoke Gas and Electric, he says, has committed to reinvesting the $3 million purchase price into the city's urban core, to remove blight and attract developers to the area.
Lisi and others describe the proposed zone change as ill-advised "spot zoning" that favors the prospective developer over the broader needs of the neighborhood and city. Proponents contend that rezoning to allow retail is appropriate after years of efforts to market the parcel for industrial use yielded no takers.
"New England isn't exactly a mecca for new industry these days," says Grow Holyoke's Lansford. "In the meantime, the whole Ingleside area has really turned into one of the major retail centers of New England. Building on that seems to me to be a positive thing."
"I think that the vast majority of people in the city of Holyoke are supportive of this type of growth," says Sullivan. "We always hear people that rally against the big boxes, but their parking lots continue to be full."
