Spring 2003
'Home Improvement'
by Alison Bickerstaff
In fall 2002, developers dropped anchor in Bellingham’s Roosevelt Neighborhood — a 165,000-square-foot Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse.
The development replaced more than 20 homes and the Bellingham Covenant Church with Sunset Marketplace Shopping Center. When the development is finished, Lowe’s will be surrounded by a new Walgreen’s, Well’s Fargo Bank, McDonald’s and possibly a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Roosevelt community members said they are wary of the ripple effect big chain stores like Lowe’s might have on the local economy and quality of life.
As the number of corporate chain stores increases across the country, the livelihood of their local, independent counterpart, like Bellingham’s Hardware Sales, Inc. is threatened.
While Lowe’s and Hardware Sales differ in reception, layout, selection, employee welfare and community contributions, they do share one common trait — neither plans to leave town any time soon.
Lowe’s officials refused to be interviewed. According to Lowe’s Web site, the 57-year-old company set its sights on becoming the hardware and building supply destination for homeowners in the early 1980s. The company launched an aggressive expansion campaign in the 1990s and now employs roughly 130,000 people. In 2002 the company sold $26.5 billion worth of merchandise at more than 850 stores in 45 states.
Identical bright signs and wide aisles characterize all Lowe’s outlets. Hardware Sales is the antithesis of this formula layout.
The family-owned and operated store, a seemingly unorganized, narrow-aisled, jungle of roughly 100,000 different items, has weathered the rise and fall of other local hardware stores, as well as the more recent retail giants, for more than 40 years. Stocked from floor to ceiling with hose clamps next to towel bars and fish food next to hand torches, the store is bursting at the seams. The company plans to expand onto four additional city lots on top of the 25 it already spans.
Store President Jerry McClellan said Hardware Sales grosses nearly $15 million each year and his employees are on a first name basis with as many as 50 percent of the customers who walk through the store’s doors.
“Hardware Sales is rich in loyalty, life, family and friends,” he said, “and we’re rich on paper.”
Tony Pflanzer, a sales representative for Hardware Sales, lives across the street from the new Lowe’s development. He said the development wasn’t the kind of “home improvement” he and his neighbors were looking for in their neighborhood.
Pflanzer said he fought the rezone at the Lowe’s development because he didn’t want to see acres of blacktop and deal with the associated noise and traffic.
Originally, another chain hardware store, Home Depot, wanted to build its store at the Lowe’s site, but lost a zoning battle in the early 1990s.
In reaction to pressure from increasing commercial development along East Sunset Drive, the Bellingham City Council approved a new plan for the Roosevelt Neighborhood in 1997 that changed the site’s zoning to commercial. The new plan also required developers to construct an extension of nearby Barkley Boulevard to relieve traffic congestion. It was a price — $2 million — Lowe’s developers were willing to pay.
Pflanzer said as a Hardware Sales employee he didn’t feel threatened by the new store in town.
“Hardware Sales will still be standing,” he said. “The big guys will focus on eating each other and whoever’s still there will be left panting.”
Jason Lind also lives on Orleans Street directly across from the new Lowe’s. He said he fears if the store fails, the surrounding neighborhood would be left looking at an empty 165,000-square-foot box.
“I don’t want to see what happened with Home Base happen here, too,” he said. “When they left town they left a huge ‘big box’ behind that’s an eyesore and waste of space and money.”
He said although he didn’t object to development in general or to Lowe’s as a business, he took issue with the development across the street from his house because it violated the neighborhood plan governing zoning and development.
Between Lowes’ parking lot and Lind’s house sits an open green lot, known as Parcel D, where developers wanted to place a grocery store with a driveway exiting to Orleans Street.
“But the Roosevelt Neighborhood Plan said you can’t have a really huge commercial building in Parcel D or an entrance point on Orleans,” he said.
In a written response to Lind’s concerns, the developer, Jeffrey Oliphant of California-based Sunset Drive Investors, L.L.C., offered Lind $2,000 to “agree to withdraw any objections, and to not encourage others to object to the development as currently proposed.”
Lind said he refused the money. He was able to stop the grocery store, but the rest of the shopping center was allowed to proceed.
He said the Bellingham City Council approved the developer’s plans in spite of the violations to the neighborhood plan, which the council subsequently went back and revised when it passed a resolution.
The resolution also permitted the buffer between Lowe’s south side and residents on Indiana Street to be 30 feet narrower than the neighborhood plan originally required.
“The developers proposed a 70-foot-wide buffer with two constructed wetlands, and we said that was OK,” said Steve Sundin, a Bellingham city planner.
In November 2001, the city issued a stop-work order to developers after workers accidentally cleared mature trees from the intended buffer.
“We believe it was an honest mistake,” Sundin said.
Lind said he didn’t think the tree clearing on Indiana Street was accidental.
“They put some trees back in, but nothing like they could or should have done,” he said. “I guess that’s the power of money.”
On Lowe’s south side the two constructed wetlands are surrounded by the new, staked trees the developers had to plant. Many of the trees did not survive their first year. Cardboard boxes and plastic bags now litter the wetland’s shores.
“The wetlands meet the minimum requirements,” Sundin said. “If it clogs with garbage, though, the wetlands obviously won’t function.”
Beyond the troubles with the wetland, community members worry about the other effects the development could have on the community. Pflanzer said he doesn’t like big box stores because their profits leave the community and end up in the hands of absentee owners — people who don’t call Bellingham home.
Michelle Long, executive director of Sustainable Connections, said local businesses act as better stewards of their place in a community than big box stores. Sustainable Connections is a network of local business owners that strive to promote a local living economy, quality of life and natural resource stewardship in Northwest Washington.
“In general, all such big box stores like Lowe’s don’t add to our community, our sense of place,” she said. “We prefer people shop at Hardware Sales.”
On McClellan’s office walls hang pictures of three generations of his family, which owns and runs the business together. He started working at the store 42 years ago.
“Someday my sister, LaDonna (George), and I are going to sell out to our kids,” he said.
McClellan said the store’s diversity and willingness to go out of its way for customers has kept it in business for decades. Currently, the store is open six days a week, but McClellan said the store might have to open on Sundays.
“But we try to keep that day open for ourselves and our employees,” McClellan said.
Lowe’s, which McClellan said only affected his store’s growth minutely, is open longer hours than Hardware Sales and every day of the year except Christmas and Thanksgiving.
McClellan said in addition to keeping his employees satisfied, supporting the surrounding community is a high priority for the store.
“We donate to a couple hundred local organizations each year, including the local Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs, little league teams and a women’s care shelter in town,” McClellan said. “The big chain stores don’t sponsor in the community like that.”
Rich Koss, a local general contractor and former Hardware Sales employee, said the owners of Hardware Sales have the power to help the community in times of need in ways that its larger competitors cannot.
“A couple of years ago we had a heat wave here,” he said. “All of the other stores had to go through corporate headquarters to buy fans which takes a long time, but we went straight to the distributor and had pallet-loads full of fans that people were buying right off the truck. We were the only store in town that had fans.”
George Mead, a customer of more than 30 years, came into Hardware Sales to buy a lawn mower blade. For 27 years, Whatcom County has employed him as its purchasing agent. Mead said he will only buy supplies from Hardware Sales, which he said has saved the county countless times during emergencies.
“If we have emergencies like storms or floods, I can call (McClellan) and someone will go open up the store for me at 2 or 3 in the morning so I can grab what I need and go,” Mead said. “You have people’s lives in the balance, people’s houses, people’s farms.”
He said when he buys items at Hardware Sales he’s contributing to the local economy.
“And when the county courthouse makes out a check for Hardware Sales, that money stays right here in the county,” he said.
Bellingham Mayor Mark Asmundson said the city encourages businesses that help sustain the local economy.
“You see, in America there will be multiple avenues through which business is pursued,” he said. “The Lowes and the Wal-Marts of the world are not evil, but by design, their loyalty is to an undifferentiated mass of somewhat faceless individuals and entities known as shareholders that can be scattered around the planet.”
Long said when big box stores move into town, they displace sales from existing local businesses.
“The pie doesn’t get bigger,” she said. “People are just moving their dollars to a business that doesn’t have owners who make decisions around whether their actions are going to help families, kids or the natural environment.”
Lind, while holding one of his daughters in his front yard, said he used to look at houses and a row of trees.
“My point is that if this can happen in (the Roosevelt) neighborhood, it could happen in any neighborhood,” he said. “And Lowe’s never comes to town alone.”
Across the street from Lind’s home, at the development, a construction worker took off his hard hat, wiped his brow with the back of a dirty glove, and got back to work. A Spec-Mix sat ready to pave the way for the cars that will come to visit the new Walgreens, Wells Fargo Bank and other stores slated for the development.
Signs staked into the earth advertised the other new stores were “coming soon.”