The Small Town Environment

Published in slightly edited form March 27, 2013 in The Foothills Sun-Gazette

     "We need more businesses downtown!  Why are you trying to stop this store? All you do is complain.  If you don't like it here, maybe you should leave.  I think you need to grow up!"

     The older woman had come to the podium at the March 12th Lindsay city council meeting to speak during the public comment period, and she had turned to face me directly, where I was sitting in the front row.  Mayor Padilla kindly reminded her that she should address the Council, not the audience, and she turned her heat back to the microphone.

     It was a humbling experience, to be yelled at like an unruly teenager by someone who may have less years than I have.  I was glad I was sitting between two men, both a little larger and a little older than I am, all of us wedged into those theater-like chairs from a time when bodies came in somewhat smaller sizes.

     An hour later, the Dollar General proposal would be removed from the agenda at the request of the applicant, tabled to the April 9 meeting largely due to the efforts of myself and my attorney.  Since that day, we have been working relentlessly to figure out what would be best for Lindsay, the whole community and the downtown, given what knowledge exists about developments of this kind and what tools are at hand to shape them.

     It is because I love Lindsay and the small town environment it provides me and the rest of this community who love it, too, that I'm giving every spare minute to this question.  After weeks of wrestling with it, I know that a Dollar General store downtown would serve many of our residents.  I also know it will take away business from many local shopkeepers, and I don't know who will fail as a result.

     The location and the design elements could make a big difference.  Although our city planner uses words like "interconnectivity" and "walkability" to describe the way Dollar General will support the downtown, it appears to me that his plan is actually oriented toward supporting the McDermont complex instead, pulling activity northward, away from downtown.

     The issue is whether residents coming to Dollar General to shop will just pull into the spacious parking lot, get their goods and go, or whether they'll use that trip to stop in at the hardware store and maybe meander further along Elmwood and Honolulu to see what the other shops have.  My position, knowing myself, is that if I've parked on the street and walked along the sidewalk to get to the Dollar General store, I'm more likely to keep walking afterward than if I've pulled into their parking lot.  When I've parked in somebody's parking lot, out of respect for the business as well as pure habit, I'm more likely to get back in my car and go rather than leave my car there whle I walk around town shopping at other businesses.  Parking in a public space changes that completely.

     There are other elements that could make a difference:  orienting the building to face the street, positioned on the sidewalk with parking (and a back entry) behind; display windows and doors along the public sidewalk, inviting people to come in; hiring practices that place local people in the sales positions rather than ever-changing strangers from outside. Windows that let in natural light to sense what time of day and weather make a more humane shopping and working environment than these windowless box stores that shut out everything.  Right now I'm arguing for an exterior facade that ties into the brick buildings downtown rather than the Spanish-style architecture mimicking city hall because it's a way of honoring the business community it seeks to become a member of, rather than the government entity giving it access to our local buying dollars.

     In a fine article describing the explosion of dollar stores in this region (Sun-Gazette, Feb. 27, 2013,) John Lindt wrote that these stores are being placed in communities that have never been served by national chains before.  That's true of towns like Farmersville, Ivanhoe, Goshen, maybe even Woodlake, but not for towns like Lindsay, Dinuba and Exeter.  In their heyday, they were a mixture of national chains like J.C. Penney's, Mode-O-Day, Western Auto and Sprouse-Reitz and the independent cafes, shoe stores, dress shops, stationery and furniture stores that developed right alongside.  A healthy small town has both, and they provide a rich environment for raising families that offers models of individuals' entrepreneurial skills and connectedness to the national economy and culture.

     I recognize that what the dollar store phenomenon connects us to is an economic reality of the schism in our culture:  the disappearing middle class, the engorged ranks of the people falling below the poverty line, and the enormous economic power of the tiny minority at the top.  It's not pretty, but I don't blame that on Dollar General.  The question is whether we are community enough to require them to join us in rebuilding our town by altering their designs in ways that will support rather than erode our central business district, or whether we'll just let them scrape off what little cream there is.  Please join me in asking for their assistance.
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Trudy Wischemann is a writer and researcher who has been estimating and defending the value of small town environments all her life.  You can send her your thoughts % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA  93247 or leave a comment here, below.