Dollar Store Plans Divide Vermont Residents

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

CHESTER, Vt. — Almost two decades after the National Trust for Historic Preservation put the entire state of Vermont on its list of endangered sites, citing big-box store development as a threat to its signature greenness, towns like this one are sizing up a new interloper: the chain dollar store.

While Wal-Mart has managed to open only four stores in Vermont and Target still has none, more than two dozen Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Family Dollar Stores have cropped up around the state. All three companies are thriving in the bad economy — between them, they have more than 20,000 outlets nationwide, selling everything from pet food and laundry soap to jeans, pool toys and school supplies. Their spread through Vermont, with its famously strict land-use laws, has caught chain-store opponents off guard.

Shawn Cunningham, a resident of rural Chester who is fighting Dollar General’s plan to open a store down the street from the town common, said that since dollar stores tend to be much smaller than big-box stores, they are often not precluded by local zoning rules meant to keep sprawl in check.

“It’s not like you’re bringing in a 100,000-square-foot supercenter,” said Mr. Cunningham, who started a group, Smart Growth Chester, to fight the Dollar General proposal.

So far, the battle has been in vain; the town’s Development Review Board narrowly voted last month to let Dollar General open a 9,100-square-foot store on South Main Street as long as it agreed to 35 conditions, including that it use wood clapboard siding and smaller signs than usual. The project could still be scuttled under Act 250, a state law that empowers regional boards to reject development based on environmental, aesthetic and other criteria. Mr. Cunningham said his group would also file an appeal with the environmental division of Vermont Superior Court.

Supporters of Dollar General’s plan to open here say it would expand the tax base and keep residents from having to drive to larger towns for whatever Chester’s lone grocery store does not provide.

But Mr. Cunningham and other opponents say that Dollar General, which has opened 15 stores in Vermont in recent years, including one in Springfield, less than eight miles away, will be the beginning of the end for what might best be described as Chester’s Vermontiness. They theorize that second-home owners will abandon the town rather than abide a discount chain store there, tourists in search of a bucolic escape will avoid it and Lisai’s Market, the beloved local grocery store, will be forced out of business.

“People come here and stay at the inns and eat at the restaurants not because we have Disney World but because we have Chester,” said Claudio Veliz, an architect who moved here from New York. “That is the hull of our boat, and Dollar General wants to put its fist right through the hull.”

Citizen groups have also opposed dollar stores in other states, including New Hampshire, New Mexico, California and Indiana. But such battles can be particularly trenchant in Vermont, with its tourism-dependent economy and fierce protection of its landscape. In Franklin County, opponents fought a proposed Wal-Mart for almost 20 years until the Vermont Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of the project last summer.

Chester, with 3,000 residents, has a number of homegrown businesses, many located in Victorian houses along Main Street. But there is little in the way of generic commercial architecture here — a selling point that drew residents like Mr. Veliz and Mr. Cunningham, who moved his family here from Baltimore in 2004.

“Most of the people in Chester now are people who have come from someplace else,” Mr. Cunningham said. “It’s like a lot of Vermont. Why come to a place like this only to have it turn into the kind of place you were trying to leave?”

Nodding to that concern, the Development Review Board is requiring Dollar General to use certain materials — the wood clapboard siding, for example, instead of a vinyl alternative that the company had proposed. Dollar General on its own proposed a building with a peaked roof, as well as a cupola and a faux hayloft door.

In their decision approving the project, board members noted that a retail store was an “allowed use” in the part of town where Dollar General wants to open. They also said that, by using wood siding, the store would meet a zoning requirement that new buildings “adhere harmoniously to the overall New England architectural appearance” of the town.

Tawn Earnest, a spokeswoman for Dollar General, said the company had a long history in small towns and rural communities, often serving customers who have few retail options. Opposition to Dollar General, which is based in Goodlettsville, Tenn., is “a rare exception,” Ms. Earnest said, adding, “We have been very thoughtful in the placement and design of the store to benefit Chester.”

Paul Bruhn, executive director of the Preservation Trust of Vermont, said opposition to dollar stores has sprung up in at least four other towns in the state. Mr. Bruhn’s group, which seeks to protect what it calls “the essential character of Vermont,” has been tracking the spread of dollar stores since 2010; it provides grant money to citizen groups that oppose them, including Mr. Cunningham’s.

“The dollar stores have proliferated in a way that seems a little extreme,” Mr. Bruhn said. “One of the things I think is crucial for Vermont, in terms of maintaining this very special brand that we have, is we don’t want to look like Anywhere, U.S.A. And homegrown businesses are a crucial piece of that.”

The spread of dollar stores has come during a period of decline for the general store, a Vermont institution that in many towns served as a meeting place and all-purpose emporium. This week, the Barnard General Store, not far from Chester, closed. Its owners cited the twin blows of Tropical Storm Irene, which badly flooded parts of the state last summer, and a nearly snowless winter that kept skiers away.

Lonnie Lisai, whose family owns Lisai’s Market, said he was already strategizing about how to survive if the Dollar General opens. A lunchtime salad bar, a fancy cheese selection and lower-cost alternatives to national brands are in the offing, he said.

“If you pay a buck over at Dollar General and you’re going to pay a buck eighty-nine here, it’s, boy, what do you tell the customer?” Mr. Lisai said. “I can’t compete. And hopefully they’ll understand that.”

NYT