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The recent uptick in big box projects and proposals in the Crescent
City, fueled by tax subsidies and other costly giveaways, has left
owners of smaller home-grown businesses in related industries gritting
their teeth and bracing for hard times. They might not have a
champion in City Hall, but an Emmy Award-winning journalist is working
to shine a light on their situation with his documentary
film-in-progress, “Independent America: Rising from the Ruins.” The
final feature-length documentary is scheduled to be complete and ready
for national broadcast in late summer/early fall 2008.

Hanson Hosein and his assistants have been touring the city with their
cameras to find out how a wide variety of “Mom and Pop” businesses are
faring in post-Katrina New Orleans. Not surprisingly, they’ve found a
playing field that’s far from level. See a three-minute in-production
preview.

The clip includes comments from Dr. Edward Blakely of the city’s
Office of Recovery Development and Administration as he bicycles with
Hosein through a Katrina-damaged neighborhood. Blakely tells Hosein
that “…the pressure from the ordinary citizens [is] to bring more
Wal-Marts, bring more Lowe’s, bring more Home Depots…” Blakely
concedes that big boxes may “put these… little guys out of business”
but insists that citizens he is hearing from say they’re focused on
their own rebuilding efforts, and “… can’t think about that guy’s
business.” Granted, Dr. Blakely’s sound bite was extracted from a
larger conversation, but it is fair to ask whether his
characterization of citizen attitudes is accurate. Are New Orleanians
really clamoring for chain retailers per se, or simply for a robust
local economy? It is a mistake to conflate the two.

Locally-owned businesses have been critical in our city’s recovery.
Many reopened within days of the storm, showing their loyalty and
commitment to this community while the corporate chains nervously kept
their distance. Now that federal recovery money is trickling in, big
retailers are courting local politicians and scoring the sort of tax
incentives our local businesses can only dream about. Ironically,
independent business owners will subsidize with their tax dollars
those projects that threaten their very livelihood.

We believe that, in fact, most New Orleanians do understand the link
between community well-being and their neighborhood businesses, and
therefore do not favor the subsidized outmigration of dollars from the
local economy. For this very reason many residents of Orleans Parish
resent the drive out to neighboring parishes to shop at the big boxes;
they’d rather spend their dollars closer to home. “If I’m going to
spend my dollars at Target,” the reasoning goes, “I’d rather spend
them at a Target in Orleans Parish.”

Those who profess such an opinion may be unaware of the long-term
costs of cozying up to corporate chains: inevitably, profits are
siphoned off from the “lucky” host community and invested elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the citizen-owned businesses that have invested and
re-invested in New Orleans—and that collectively contribute hundreds
of millions of dollars and many thousands of jobs to the local
economy—get ignored by the architects of public policy. Not only is
this unfair; it is ultimately self-destructive, undermining local
decision-making, wealth creation and retention, environmental
sustainability, and competition.

The loyalty of publicly traded corporations lies with their
shareholders, not with New Orleans. Inviting them here may be a
Faustian bargain—with unhappy endings for local businesses and
consumers alike. Hanson Hosein has documented the chain-sawing of
independent small businesses around our country. His current film
project exemplifies his belief—and ours—that New Orleans can be
smarter, more diverse, and more local than hundreds of less lucky
American communities with derelict main streets and nowhere to go but
the big shiny Wal-Mart on the edge of town.

Filed under: Editorials