To the Editor: 

Happy new year, and it’s more news of big-box closings!  Walmart, Target, Macy’s – all announcing closures.  Not that their stores are losing money; their stores are not meeting corporate profit marks. 

So, they leave small communities, on which their impacts have been great, whether it’s the number of people out of jobs or the financial contributions on which the communities have come to depend, or the decimation of small businesses that could not compete and disappeared, leaving communities bereft of alternatives to the big box.

According to Mazzone & Associates Inc., “2015 Retail Industry Report”: “The Big-Box and Department Store Retailer segment will continue its long-term decline, with revenue expected to fall 4.5% per year… Brick-and-mortar stores incur higher operational costs than e-commerce stores because they pay for high-traffic retail space and require sales associates. As a result of these cost savings, online companies are increasingly undercutting traditional department store prices… The Big-Box and Department Store Retailer segment will continue to contract over the five years to 2020… the Big-Box and Department Store Retailer segment will continue to lose customers to the convenience of online shopping, with revenue decreasing 4.1% during 2016, as the percentage of services conducted online increases.”

Small communities are re-discovering and appreciating anew small businesses.  In one such place, McDowell County [West Virginia] Commissioner Harold McBride concluded, “…What we feel like we have to do is go with the smaller businesses, and bring enough of those in, and grow with them...we feel like we should go with smaller companies, where a profit’s a profit,” according to a Washington Post story, “What happens to a tiny town when Walmart disappears?”

In this new year, I’d like to thank the present members of the town of New Scotland’s town board, each of whom fought against and saved our community from a 2009 Sphere development proposal to build 1.5 million square feet of retail space.

I look forward to new zoning regulations for the creation of a "hamlet center," more appropriate to our town and a unique vision in the Capital District that would attract business, residents, and visitors.

Edie Abrams

New Scotland

Editor’s note: Edie Abrams is currently a member of the New Scotland Zoning Board of Appeals and was formerly part of the grassroots group that opposed the Sphere project.