When Does a Difference in Scale Become a Difference
in Kind(ness)?
By Tim Tielman
Go stand at the corner of Amherst and Grant Streets
to see the future of retailing in Buffalo. Women with small children and babies walking
in the street. A bus stopping 30 yards short to discharge a wheelchair passenger
on the only clear pavement available ñ the driveway of the Polish Cadets Hall. A
mountain of snow plowed over the sidewalk in front of a supermarket, in fact, the
entire perimeter ñ 1000 ft. ñ of sidewalk is uncleared. Meanwhile, across the
street, small business owners have neatly shoveled their sidewalks.
It's not that the big box stores have anything against mothers and children without
cars, wheelchair users, the elderly, and others without cars. They don't think about
them at all. They are invisible.
That was the setting for a February meeting at which Wegmans, the Rochester based
chain of big boxes, presented its plans for another auto-oriented plaza on Amherst
Street. The audience at the Polish Cadets Hall was primarily elderly working class
people with Polish surnames who had lived in Black Rock their entire lives.
There is a big difference between the social impact of these stores in suburbia,
where they tend to pioneer greenfield sites with no pedestrian tradition. Today this
suburban model is invading dense residential areas in the city, particularly in North
Buffalo And the city thinks it is a property tax bonanza, merrily setting bad planning
precedents that will make it legally very hard to not regain control of the process,
and leaving regulatory powers only to those citizens willing and financially able
to fight. That's a recipe for reactionary, rather than pro-active, planning and de
facto economic and transportation discrimination. This is endangering the lives of
pedestrians, degrading people's quality of life, and busting neighborhoods.
Tax revenue-driven development in a county and city that are losing population does
not seem rational. The increased traffic is blighting neighborhoods far afield. Residential
property is being made less desirable up and down Amherst Street, particularly near
Delaware, where auto and truck traffic, noise, and fumes never seem to stop. It is
a very unpleasant to contemplate raising a family there. And older commercial real
estate just gets an accelerated rate of filtering, dragging down assessments.
The most difficult challenge the Wegmans neighbors face? Finding a good lawyer to
work cheap or free and the resolve to push hard to win.
Big Box retailers are not registered charities. They come to an area to exploit its
purchasing power. People are not starving in Black Rock, Parkside West , or Elmwood
for lack of food stores. Why should they be the victims as faceless corporations
cannibalize each other for market share?
Wegmans won't do it? Let them walk. There will be plenty of others.