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The good thing about Bad Ideas is that they are really easy to spot — after the fact.

No one in New Orleans today would seriously propose erecting an elevated interstate along the river in front of the French Quarter.

No one in New Orleans today would seriously propose cutting down miles of live oak trees in the heart of the city to erect an elevated expressway over top of Claiborne Avenue.

Those are Clearly Bad Ideas. If the people running the show back then were as enlightened as we are (we tell ourselves) these Clearly Bad Ideas never would have been considered.

The problem with Bad Ideas, however, is that at the time they are proposed they apppear to have a logic about them. Thoughtful people embrace the Bad Idea. In fact, they often defend the Really Bad Idea as the Only Hope. The Progressive Solution. They call it the Really Good Idea.

“But we MUST do the Bad Idea,” they say. Houston has the Bad Idea. Atlanta has the Bad Idea. We need it too!

The latest Bad Idea making the rounds among New Orleans’ leading lights is the idea that our only hope for salvation is to bring Big-Box Sprawl into the city. Like earlier arguments for demolition of “slums” and the need for elevated expressways to stimulate “progress” and “generate taxes,” today’s advocates are merely regurgitating conventional wisdom.

While it is disappointing to see our mayor and council members uncritically embracing the corporate spin of big-box sprawl, the misconceptions about chain retailing are widespread. The corporate chain retailers and their developer partners spend millions of dollars each year on PR and lobbying efforts designed to ensure them a place at the table as well as a hefty helping of public funds each time they come to town.

It is worth reminding ourselves that while big-box lobbyists and supporters talk about their stores having risen to dominate the retail landscape due to the operation of free markets, developers rarely build their “power centers” and “lifestyle developments” without extracting subsidies — the taxes paid by us residents and all our locally-owned businesses. The Wal-Mart development on Tchoupitoulas received $20 million in tax breaks. The Lowes on Elysian Fields received $3.6 Milllion. The Home Depot on Claiborne currently has their hand in the kitty.

Why is it that our local businesses — who returned and served this community during the rebuilding process — are now being forced to subsidize the corporations who plan to drive them out of business? That doesn’t seem fair.

Thankfully, New Orleans is not the first community to face the challenge of corporate chain retail. We can examine economic data from across the country. And when we do this, the chains loose their appeal. They offer little to no economic benefit. They are not generators of jobs for the poor. Rather than providing tax revenue to the city, they drain it away.

Some examples:

• From Maine: local merchants were found to return to the local economy $45 of every $100 in consumer spending, compared to $14 for chain stores. (See NewRules.org for a copy of this study).
• From Chicago: Locally-owned businesses generate a 70% Local Premium in enhanced economic impact. (Visit AndersonvilleStudy.com for a copy of this study)
• From Sante Fe: Not only do national chains send money outside of the community, they distort the local economies by shifting activity away from downtowns and concentrating sales on one property. This overstates the importance of large retailers for tax revenues and jobs. Download the PDF of this study
• Again From Maine: Dollars spent at a local retailer support not only that store, but a variety of other local businesses, including local banks, accountants, printers, and internet service providers. From an economic development perspective, the ramifications of this are substantial.
• From Austin: Development of urban sites with directly competitive chain merchants will reduce the overall vigor of the local economy.
• As far back as 1995, Sonoma County, California concluded that “retail sales … have only been shifted around geographically by the new big-box centers, with no real net increase in sales, despite population increases in the county.”

So we would like to propose a different development model. One that has been proven to work time and again:

Support local businesses first.

What does supporting local businesses first mean? It means if the city has tax dollars to give away in the form of subsidies, lets craft the legislation so that our home-grown businesses can access these funds. If the chains still want to come, let them use their own capital—not ours.

What can neighborhoods and communities do to ensure that they get good developments that increase their quality of life, rather than creating traffic and sprawl? For starters, insist that new developments in your area abide by a few rules:

1. Insist on no sale of public right-of-ways. Don’t let developers buy public streets and other right-of-ways. Make them build within the existing urban fabric.
2. Insist that developments in your community not receive corporate welfare. Taxes paid by local businesses and homeowners should not be given away to out-of-town corporations.
3. Require that all developments in your neighborhood greater than 20,000 sq. ft. submit a written document to your neighborhood organization detailing how their project supports the goals and objectives of the neighborhood plan as you created it via the Lambert Plan and the Unified New Orleans Plan. If the developer can’t explain how their project helps your community reach its goals and how it aligns with your priorities, they probably need to find another location.

This is our city. If people want to join us in rebuilding and share in the wealth we create together, let them come and be a part of it. But if they are just here to extract short-term profits by building more of the same crud that litters the landscape of Houston and Jacksonville, then it is our right to politely decline the offer.

You can find lots of useful information, reports, and tips from across the country at StayLocal.org/info/

Filed under: Editorials | Rebuilding New Orleans | Stay Local