Last week, Maine became the first state to sign a law requiring developers of big box retailers to prove that their properties won't be hazardous to local communities.
The measure, the Informed Growth Act, requires developers of stores exceeding 75,000 square feet to deposit $40,000 for use by the governing city or town to fund a study of the project's impact on municipal services, traffic, local employment and nearby bodies of water, among other things. According to the Wall Street Journal, the proposed store can't be approved if the study finds it will likely cause a quantifiable "undue adverse impact" in at least two cases and is expected to have a harmful effect on the community overall.
The Maine legislation is the first state law of its kind in the U.S., although similar measures have been proposed in six other states in the past two years. A bill made it through the California State Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another measure is under review in New Jersey.
As in similar cases, proponents of Maine's new law argued that locally-owned businesses generate a bigger "economic multiplier" by keeping taxes in state and typically using other local merchants. Big boxes also may create traffic congestion and ruin "the Maine way of life." Opponents argued that the law creates hurdles for businesses trying to locate in Maine and that big box chains ultimately benefit lower-income households with their lower prices.
Maine business groups will again push to modify the bill to allow cities and towns to opt out of the requirements during Maine's next legislative session, which begins in January. "We have felt that some of the groups supporting the legislation probably will not end here and probably will go after even smaller development in the future," Jim McGregor, executive vice president of the Maine Merchants Association, told the Journal.
The Retail Industry Leaders Association, a trade group of large national retailers, described the law as "fundamentally anticompetitive, anti-consumer legislation."
But the Maine legislation and other similar bills show that lawmakers remain leery of large-format retailers.
Chain proliferation "really is changing the dynamic of the face of the country in a sense, with employment practices and buying habits at both the individual and [corporate level]," New Jersey Assemblyman Jeff Van Drew, a Democratic co-sponsor of an impact-study bill in that state, told the Journal. "Part of that is the effect these stores have not only in your community but on neighboring communities."
Discussion Questions: Statewide efforts to curb big-box expansion have rarely been successful. Do you think the passing of Maine's big box law shows that anti-development forces are becoming a more serious threat to retailers? Is there anything else retailers can be doing to curry favor rather than resentment in local communities?