Sleight of Hand

By: Mr. Wilson on January 6, 2006
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Mayor Colleen Seng engages in a bit of disingenuous sleight of hand in this morning's Journal Star. The focus of the article is the size of the proposed Wal-Mart -- Wal-Mart wants to build a 230,000 square foot Supercenter but will settle for 195,000 square foot, while Seng and some members of the City Council want to place the cap at 100,000 square foot. Seng says that 100,000 square feet is large enough for any individual store. She said
We know many retailers build stores of that size and all grocery stores in Lincoln are less than that size.
Her statement is true, but it's also beside the point. First, it doesn't matter what "many retailers" do. Many retailers aren't Wal-Mart; they don't have the same resources, they don't offer the same goods and services, and they don't draw the same customer base. Second, the size of existing grocery stores in Lincoln is all but irrelevant. Is it really Seng's position that a business can never grow larger than pre-existing, competing businesses? Third, the proposed Wal-Mart is both a retail store and a grocery store. It is incredibly misleading to compare the size of a dual-role store to a single-role store. It's not so much comparing apples to oranges as it is comparing one apple to an apple and an orange. Mayor Seng and some council members object to any individual store in a neighborhood center exceeding 100,000 square feet. That is ridiculous. What makes a neighborhood center a neighborhood center are the types of services offered, and the combined square footage of the property and the businesses operating on that property. Why would it be OK for a developer to build a single-building, 200,000 square foot strip mall containing 10 businesses, but not a single-building, 200,000 square foot store containing all of the goods and services of those ten businesses? The only substantive difference between the two is the presence of separating walls and individual entrances. Is that what Seng wants? A separate entrance to and walls dividing each of Wal-Mart's departments? Clearly not. Seng is being sizeist, plain and simple. Whether that bigotry is rooted in an anti-Wal-Mart ideology or something else is uncertain. What is certain is that basing one's approval or disapproval of a large commercial development on the square footage of a single proposed business -- while agreeing in principle with the square footage of the development as a whole -- is absurd. The suggestion that more and smaller businesses are better than fewer and larger businesses is nonsensical when the sum of the businesses (in size and scope) are equal. Mayor Seng is either mired in illogic, or a fear or hatred of Wal-Mart. Neither is conducive to sound policy decisions.

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