tell me, please, do you want box stores?

December 4, 2007 at 9:48 pm | In airport, airport rotary, barnstable, barnstable town council, cape cod, cape cod commission, route 132, seven villages | 26 Comments

If you are reading front page stories lately, it is clear that large chain box stores are trying to find their way to our pocketbooks by setting up shop in Hyannis.

The current front-page-story-proposal is for a major electronics company to move in close to the traffic nightmare around the airport rotary and add more cars to the mix.  Any curb-cut with that amount of of added traffic so close to an already over-clogged rotary is causing concern in the community.

There are issues of zoning and traffic changes that are being discussed in the whole, but the larger issue is simply: big box stores. National chains. 

Do we want them in Hyannis? 

This is becoming an important part of the discussion and we need to hear from you.

  • Should we just accept that ”box stores” are coming and work on zoning changes that would minimize their impact on major traffic areas? (no access directly from rt 132 near the rotary for example)
  • Will more local businesses go under as the the big chains offer merchandise and well-advertised discounts that our local guys can’t afford to offer?
  •  If a national chain department store moves in, will you spend your money in that type of department store rather than the smaller stores on your village’s main street or in the areas away from the Rt. 132 neighborhood?
  • Do you want to see Rt. 132 or surrounding areas become home to some of the same national chains we see in clusters in off-Cape cities and towns?

Please post a comment or send an email.  Let me know, and I will share your views as we tackle this issue.

We will be discussing this more in the near future……

26 Comments »

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  1. There is not easy way in or out of this issue kind of like the rotary itself. However something has to be done about Star City Grille it is becoming an eyesore.

    Comment by TJ — December 4, 2007 #

  2. we need more jobs…

    do these large stores provide jobs?

    Comment by WARNING — December 5, 2007 #

  3. Of course they offer jobs. These will be the jobs that are typical of the mall, best buy, walmart etc. Of course, local businesses also offer jobs.

    Comment by JSJ — December 5, 2007 #

  4. (editor’s note: some of this has been deleted and edited to keep with my rules)

    I have to drive that section of road every day and I think you are crazy to be considering adding a large store like Circut City to that MESS.

    Obviously the reason that businesses like Chilis and Starbucks and many other businesses have GONE UNDER in that spot is because of the traffic nighmares!

    Does anyone know how many accidents occur in front of the Wendy’s? How about people turing into Citizens Bank?

    I thought this town was going to eliminate turn offs along that road!
    You need to make these people build their stores in other places. Maybe they can go in Hyannis but not in stupid places like the old Starbucks or whatever it was.

    Comment by Concerned about traffic — December 5, 2007 #

  5. We would all love to have locals revitalize these types of locations, however as of yet this has not heppened. If chain/box stores want to invest in our community when locals won’t or can’t it serves us all well to welcome them.

    Comment by TC — December 5, 2007 #

  6. I’d rather have a job at a store like Home Depot than one selling tee shirts during the warm months…. we need to start thinking outside “the box” i agree! But we need yearround jobs.

    Comment by WARNING — December 5, 2007 #

  7. BTW- i was on Taryn’s Blog earlier and left a comment basically telling her to get a life and move on. I’m sorry to bring her up, but you seem to move on from her constant obsessive attacks like a normal person and that’s impressive. When is someone going to call the DMH and look into getting Taryn the help that she needs.

    Comment by WARNING — December 5, 2007 #

  8. No.
    Keep these corporate monstrosities out.

    Comment by Anonymous — December 5, 2007 #

  9. The timing on your post is interesting considering we are going to be going to Wareham and Plymouth this weekend to go Christmas shopping. Bet lots of others are doing the same. We will look at the way the big stores are set up and imagine them in Hyannis and get back to you.

    Comment by Anonymous — December 5, 2007 #

  10. Right now I would rather have to leave town to shop in these places. Remember that rt. 132 area before the mall? Everyone did business on main street back then. The five and dime – the little stores – we all knew who owned what and we all knew their families.
    But then it also wasn’t a one way street back then!

    Comment by Anonymous — December 5, 2007 #

  11. Hyannis can’t survive on tourism anymore. Small stores are a thing of the past

    Comment by Moe — December 5, 2007 #

  12. “box stores” like target and walmart are what has destroyed this country.
    They sell stuff made in china and india. The jobs pay jack have no healthcare. Walmart’s best customers are Walmart employees who are so damn poor they can’t afford to shop anywhere else.
    If you really want to turn this town into a city thats the fastest way to get it done.

    Comment by Anonymous — December 6, 2007 #

  13. I remember playing mini golf where the mall is now.

    Comment by Anonymous — December 6, 2007 #

  14. We wanted BJ’s to move in but that is it.
    The wife likes to go to Target in Kingston and I don’t mind the ride.
    My kids by my grandkids stuff online anyways.
    We don’t need them here. The traffic is bad enough!

    Comment by sandy — December 6, 2007 #

  15. I agree… things have changed and the practices overseas are not fair… but that doesn’t mean we should starve here locally… we need to change with the times… tourism and good old cape cod are dead in Hyannis… tourism simply can no longer support our population, let’s get real… the residents need jobs and the town needs to develop industry… this is now a city – the city on cape cod

    Comment by Moe — December 6, 2007 #

  16. This is all very interesting.
    Sounds like Moe has first hand experience with the tourism industry.
    I am not sure people are ready to say tourism is dead, but we need to admit that the season is short.
    But there are two issues here related to circut city.

    -First and more specific to that project, there are efforts being made to work with the developer to prevent what would be a very busy curb-cut from opening up to just west of the rotarty nightmare.
    The trip generation numbers for such a store are huge. People cutting across teh highway to exit to the rotary, people cutting across the highway to enter from the rotary will just intensify the problems we have with
    We need to develope the kind of access to such places as they have in other areas that host these stores.

    -Second and more important is: do we want to develope a zoning strategy to create a place for these large national chain stores?
    Do we want them here? Is this the kind of “industry” we want, as Moe puts it?

    Comment by JSJ — December 6, 2007 #

  17. This town needs to get its zoning ironed out.

    Doesn’t it cost a lot to fight these types of buildings?

    Comment by Anonymous — December 7, 2007 #

  18. No, box stores are eye sores. The jobs they provide are low paying and there aren’t enough workers here who are willing to work for the low wages. Visit Home Depot as an example.

    As for 132, its a death trap especially allowing left turns off that road.

    I’ve listened ad infinitium to the cries for more jobs. Get over it. There aren’t good paying jobs on this spit and the builders are eating it for lunch.

    Who among the councilors will finally have a real vision and fight to “preserve” Cape Cod. It’s not more box stores, it’s the beauty of it locale that is fast disappearing.

    Comment by Sylvia Doiron — December 7, 2007 #

  19. DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE TRAFFIC IN HYANNIS!!!!
    I was out today to get to to a medical appointment and it is just like a summer day with all the traffic!
    I got stuck in traffic both ways and it was all because of the Airport ROTARY!!!!!!
    Who ever planned that rotary did not plan for this much traffic.

    Comment by Pvj — December 8, 2007 #

  20. I just bought a bunch of presents online at Circut City with free shipping.
    Who is going to try to get to that store when you can buy the stuff online and have it shipped to the house. Its like Bed Bath etc. next to the Xmas tree shop.
    There are never any cars there.

    Comment by Anonymous — December 8, 2007 #

  21. All “box stores” are not eye sores. Have you seen the plans for the new circuit city? It is well sited, screened from the road and there is no parking in front of the building. traffic concerns/safety can be resolved. Traffic/raod issues must be addressed. Sure we can “preserve cape cod” and we’ll end up more like Nantucket. The vast majority of children that grow up here will not be able to stay. You’ll drive the residential value of property even higher and the commercial sector will shrink. We need commercial growth and redevelopement. The old Starbucks is an “eyesore” and there would be no way to stop someone from doing in there and redeveloping it as a restaurant WITHOUT addressing the traffic/safety concerns. Visionaries move forward. Obstructionists blame builders.

    Comment by Anonymous — December 8, 2007 #

  22. There is much to do about Circuit City entering our marketplace. Born in Hyannis I saw the many changes throughout the years. And I remember often visiting Story Land as a young boy where the Mall sits today. I enjoyed driving Rt. 132 in the winter years back when that road was desolate in the winter. Malls then were a new phenomenon to New England where the consumer could shop their goods under one roof. The alternative was to “travel” from store to store where prices were not always attractive. Some businesses simply had little competition to warrant price cuts. Many of my relatives went to Boston to shop around Christmas where there were big “department stores”. Sure, I’d like to see the wonderland village of yesterday without box stores and all locally owned businesses. But the reality is that we did not plan for that. We had huge blocks of commercial land along the Rt. 132 – Rt. 28 corridor which simply allowed business use with little restriction as to what would be allowed. Lacking in zoning were site plan standards or architectural overviews. What we needed more of then before commercial properties were incongruously developed were standards such as has been applied to the Mashpee Commons. This could have been applied to the area surrounding the Mall. But we can’t look back now.
    Today it is what it is. There are no legal restrictions prohibiting competition in the marketplace. The best we can do today is to enforce standards to ensure quality development. If you’ve zoned for it then at the end of the day it will be hard to shut it out.
    Big box stores should have been size restricted to the industrial zoned area long ago along with light industry and housing. Yet, “we are a reactionary community”. We first envisioned industrial companies like packaging industries and the like going into Independence Park . And then with the advent of the technological age we wanted light industry but no retail and no housing. Then we went to limited retail with no housing and afterwards retreated from retail. And now we see opportunities with housing, assisted housing and other good opportunities born out of need.
    The truth is, we love to have the big companies pay for our compounded mistakes of the pass. Communities are onto impact fees and the national chains are more than willing to pay. Today, it has become a standard. But where do you draw the line between fees related to the direct impact and the extraction of fees well beyond that. We always say we want to invite commerce but when they’re at the doorstep we deter them and hold them, yes, hostage. But when they’re here and built we love the taxes they pay and we become their regular customers. We’re always suggesting they are going to put out our local business. Yet, Home Depot didn’t put Bradfords out of business, BJ’s didn’t put S.S. Pierce/Rykoff out of business, the many shoe stores at the mall didn’t put Hanlons out. And we all thought the Mall was going to put Puritans out of business. The fact is, there are hundreds of businesses surviving outside the big box stores.
    That all said, I would love to be a patron of a new Circuit City and I’m fine with that location. Take the impact fees, ensure a quality facade and landscape and get on with it. It’s zoned for business. The very same zoning as the Mall which has Best Buy. Let’s not embattle with unnecessary legal fees. Circuit City or not, we’ll have to deal with the traffic at the rotary. We’ve created the problem through years of right and wrong allowing a concentration of commercial enterprise in an environment where consumers want choices and competitive pricing. If big box stores were not in demand by consumers they wouldn’t exist today. And, as an aside, I’d love to see a five level parking garage at the Mall so we don’t have to keep traveling the parking merry-go-round every holiday season!
    Jacques Morin
    Marstons Mills

    Comment by J. Morin — December 9, 2007 #

  23. dig a tunnel… we can call it “little big dig!” lol

    Comment by Moe — December 10, 2007 #

  24. I was talking about this at work tonight and there are a lot of people who have a lot to say about this.

    No one but developers want to have this near the rotary – but people want the stores like circuit city nearby so they don’t have to spend $50 in gas to go off-cape to buy the stuff. But the stores that come to the cape never seem to have a enough stock to keep things that are on sale on the shelf. Some guys think it is because of the cost of getting us stuff cause we are over the bridge.

    Comment by sandy — December 11, 2007 #

  25. The only people who work in these kind of stores are teenagers and people who come here from other countries. When I was Christmas shopping in Swansea and around those towns there was no one in these stores working who was over 18 or didn’t have such a serius accent we coldn’t understand them.
    Do not say that we need this type of place for jobs. Give me a break.

    Comment by Anonymous — December 11, 2007 #

  26. We went shopping over the bridge this weekend. There are towns that do this type of store well. Seems they all have their own road. not just on the street or highway by themselves. makes sense that way, you know?

    Comment by Anonymous — December 11, 2007 #


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