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Steve Rand, owner-manager of the hardware
store his grandfather founded in 1908, figured from the start
that stopping the proposed Wal-Mart Superstore on the commercial
highway outside Plymouth would be a losing battle.
"Plymouth is at a crossroads of major
roads," he said. "Wal-Mart looks at a map, decides
it wants its store here, not some competitor's. That's how
they dominate. We're just one move on their huge chessboard.
But stop them? They're too large a Goliath for this David."
Only a regional impact economic study, Rand
figured, could have tripped the Wal-Mart project. But New
Hampshire, like most states, leaves every town to fend for
itself. Even if Plymouth had turned Wal-Mart down, neighboring
towns would likely have welcomed the store and its tax base.
So now Wal-Mart has arrived and Steve Rand
is closing an outlying branch he'd had for 33 years store
near the Wal-Mart site -- one of the thousands of small-town
retail outlets extinguished by the Goliath from Bentonville.
Still, walking around downtown Plymouth
with Steve Rand -- he won't even bother with a coat on a winter
day -- you discover he has a survival strategy rolling.
His own downtown store, Rand explains, is
solidly profitable. It sells specialized hardware and paint
items acquired at attractive prices through a cooperative.
It's staffed by employees with extensive knowledge of customer
needs. To meet the new competition, the store is now open
seven days a week.
We pause at Plymouth's handsome brick post
office, facing directly onto the picturesque town common.
It has a plaque commemorating its dedication in 1936, when
James A. Farley was Postmaster General. But in the mid-'90s,
U.S. Postal Service bureaucrats decided they'd like to move
operations out of town to a one-story, one-stop facility,
convenient for trucks.
Rand and his friends hit the panic button,
contacting any- and everyone they knew in the political world,
and got the decision reversed.
They did the same when a local selectman
suggested moving Plymouth's town offices to a single-story
building, with lots of parking, far from Main Street. Rand
& allies argued hard to renovate the historic courthouse
building, also facing the town common, for town offices. They
prevailed. Instead of becoming a pile of bricks, the courthouse
underwent handsome redesign. We chat with one of the clerks;
it's clear she takes immense pride in working there.
Plymouth, it should be noted, isn't just
any old town-- it's home to thriving Plymouth State University
and its cultural arts center, where the New Hampshire Symphony
plays and many theatrical performances are launched each year.
Still, a number of Main Street stores have
struggled. Rand explains the history of each, how ugly post-World
War II facades are being replaced and strategies developed
to fill gaps. It's no surprise to discover this is one of
New Hampshire's 19 officially designated Main Streets, with
a full-time director and well developed strategy. (Nationally
there are some 1,600, reports the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, founder of the program.)
Flower barrels on Main Street, a jazz series
on the Common, a Hallowe'en festival, a welcome day for college
students and their families, merchants' forums, a downtown
cleanup day-- all are results of Plymouth's Main Street program,
now five years old.
I ask Rand who the principal supporters
are and he replies, to my surprise, that they're not predominantly
merchants -- retailers are often "the last to see the
forest for the trees." Instead, Main Street's most prominent
rooters are regional institutions -- the local hospital, the
university, a private school. The hospital and university,
for example, have recruiting issues: their prospects of attracting
a physician or professor are enhanced, notes Rand, when "downtown
is a community--not a black hole."
Put another way, Main Streets, like big
city downtowns, are calling cards to the world, often important
for a whole ring of communities. They're the antithesis of
the big box retail store -- constructed one month, open the
next, easily vacant a few seasons later as the market shifts.
Successful Main Street programs, Rand notes,
take years to mature -- four or five years to change attitudes
and build initial confidence, five to ten or more years for
owners to start reinvesting seriously, 15 or 20 for the full
recovery and new growth to take solid root.
Such patience sounds a world away from the
globalized world of the big chains -- Wal-Mart, for instance,
with its expectation of opening hundreds of stores, hiring
160,000 more employees worldwide just this year.
And virtually no one foresees a time when Americans' big-time
retailing will focus again on Main Streets.
Yet as Plymouth shows, town history matters.
And there can be a very real niche for community-based, smaller
specialized stores, the places we know and are known when
we go in. The rewards, for towns that care enough to nurture
and patronize their own, can be immense.
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