Is it time to let chain stores come back to Arcata?  We have students that need jobs!

— Anthony M

Responses

Dan Shahin

Only restaurants currently have a cap on the number allowed, while formula retail “big box” stores have been kept out more by strict zoning laws than any kind of hard cap on the number allowed.

Ask a small contractor, and they will tell you that in general, Arcata makes it more difficult to build and start a business or to remodel a home than just about any other town in Humboldt County. The difficulty a recent small business is going through to try and start a wood-fired sauna business here illustrates the disconnect between those who make the rules and those who have to follow them.

We need to encourage businesses to locate in Arcata and create jobs. We don’t have to sacrifice our small-town values and scale in order to do that.

My answer is that we don’t need formula chain stores to have a successful economic story in Arcata. The true answer is to enable homegrown businesses to thrive by eliminating the kind of red tape that lets us have a McDonald’s, Domino’s, and Carl’s Jr. right now, but would not permit a new BBQ or wood-fired pizza joint by a local entrepreneur chasing their dream.

When we let our local entrepreneurs do what they do best, they create more jobs and keep more money circulating locally than chain stores ever will.  They ship their profits off to corporate HQ, while local businesses invest them back in the community.

 

Abigail Strickland

Supporting chain stores would not solve the issue of providing more jobs for college students. Policy changes take time (sometimes a lot)- and permitting them can take even longer (especially if there is community opposition). Doing so would also create another issue- competition with existing locally owned businesses which support our students and broader community in many ways. 

If they are not already doing so, Cal Poly Humboldt should prioritize students applying for on-campus jobs such as in the bookstore, dining halls, and aquatic/recreation centers. According to their website, CPH is holding a part-time job fair at the Quad on August 25th from 10am-2pm. Go prepared with printed resumes. 

Searching for a job the week before school begins can also be challenging in and of itself. Not only is there an influx of students arriving to attend CPH but there are local students preparing to leave Humboldt to attend other colleges. As those local students vacate their positions and local businesses gain momentum from the influx of student business- there will be more job opportunities.  

Kimberley White

Thank you for the question. I think this is an important conversation for the future of Arcata. 

I think there is a bigger question here: What kind of economic development do we want for Arcata, and how do we create good jobs, including for students, while keeping our local economy strong?

First, I think it’s important to recognize that chain businesses are already part of Arcata. We have Safeway and CVS, Dollar Tree and Harbor Freight, and more recently Tractor Supply. We also have formula restaurants including McDonald’s, Subway, Carl’s Jr., Domino’s and Dutch Bros. So I don’t think the question is really whether we should “let chain stores come back.” They’re already here.

We also have to distinguish chain stores generally from formula restaurants, which Arcata has specifically regulated for many years. Our current ordinance limits formula restaurants to nine citywide, with no more than six in the Valley West neighborhood. It also protects some of our historic areas from formula restaurants.

Arcata has been having this conversation for a long time. I’ve seen firsthand, through my time on the Planning Commission, how complicated these issues can be. The City’s Committee on Democracy and Corporations had also been working on a broader Formula Retail and Services Ordinance, and in 2012 the City Council considered a draft proposal that would have used case-by-case review of formula businesses. That was a proposal, not the law we have today, but I think the history is important. Arcata has never had a simple “chains are good” or “chains are bad” conversation. We’ve been trying to figure out how to balance economic opportunity, local businesses, community character and public participation.

And yes, students need jobs. So do working parents, young people starting out, people changing careers, and people who are trying to make ends meet. But I don’t think we should assume that bringing in more national chains is automatically the answer.

There is good research behind the idea of a local economic multiplier. Locally owned businesses often keep more money circulating in the local economy because they are more likely to use local suppliers and services, employ local people and retain their profits locally. That doesn’t mean chains don’t create jobs—they absolutely do. And it doesn’t mean every local business is better than every chain. It means that when we’re talking about economic development, we should look at more than just how many jobs a business creates.

We should also be careful about assuming that “chain” and “local” are always opposites. Our two Ace Hardware stores are a great example. Hensel’s Ace and Sunny Brae Ace operate under the national Ace brand, but they are independently owned local businesses. Ace is a retailer-owned cooperative, so the name on the building doesn’t necessarily tell you who owns the business or where the economic relationships are.

I don’t want to be reflexively anti-chain, and I don’t want to be reflexively pro-chain either. I want Arcata to be a place where a local person with a good idea can actually start and grow a business, where existing businesses have a fair shot, and where responsible regional and national businesses can invest in our community and create good jobs.

When we’re looking at a new business, I think we should ask some pretty basic questions: Does it create good jobs? Does it provide something our community needs? What does it contribute to our local economy? Is it appropriate for the neighborhood? How will it affect the businesses already here? And are we making it possible for a local entrepreneur to compete fairly?

That’s the kind of economic development I want to work toward in Arcata: an economy where students and other residents can find good jobs, where local entrepreneurs have a real opportunity to succeed, and where responsible businesses of different sizes and ownership models can contribute to our community. I don’t think we have to choose between economic opportunity and the character of Arcata. We should be working to strengthen both.

Blase Bonpane

Thanks for a Hot Topic question Anthony!

I love these questions because it sounds like ones I get in classes like the poorly named “Third World Politics” class I taught at Cal Poly or in American Government at CR or in my k-12 teaching from Petrolia to Hoopa. I’ve thought about this aspect of economic policy way too much since public policy school micro-econ especially.

I LIKE that we don’t have a total ban on all chains like my dear friend Kimberly pointed out gracefully (I’m voting for her and me BTW for diversity and breadth of experience). BUT I LOVE how much we limit them. And we can produce more jobs by doing what we do best here: Homegrown Ma and Pa trickle-up economy!

Look around this gorgeous little town in the redwoods; Where we don’t have MickyD’s, we have Toni’s, Stars and The Hole in the Wall Sandwich Shop! Where we don’t have Targe-shay and Big Boxes like Beast Buy we have Eco groovy, Plaza and Bell & Hook! If we had a Barnes and Noble we probably wouldn’t have Tin Man and Northtown Books (when it comes back through the ashes of building code failure). If we had Home Despot, we might not have our locally owned Hensels and Mad River Farm Supply (and I wouldn’t sport their T-shirts).

Its not Arcata if its not funky-functional like the coop, Wildberries and farmers market instead of draining the Amazon and its subsidiaries like Whole Foods/Whole Paycheck. We ain’t no mainstream corporate sell outs and we don’t need to be. WHAT BRINGS THE PEOPLE AND THE BUSINESS IS OUR-CATA UNIQUENESS. 

Let Marin be Marin. Let Arcata be Arcata. In short, we will bring more business and more businesses if we stay true to our ever-more sophisticated practice and culture which is built from some of the following uniquenesses of Arcata: 1) Increasingly takes guidance from the tribes whose unceded land we stand on and who took care of it for the last fifteen thousand years. 2) Has invested in publically accessible outdoor spaces including the Plaza where we voted to take down a Fascist President Statue, 3) Invests in city parks and recreation and arts programming, 4) Keeps people feeling free to shop by KEEPING ICE OUT! With sanctuary city policies though they need to be ramped up fast, 5) Has unique celebrations and ceremonies like the Fairy Fest, Oysterfest, North Country Fair and the City’s Lantern Floating Ceremony and nuclear free zone. Both of the latter are for peace (commemorating Hiroshima and Nagasaki and uplifting the worldwide resistance to all acts of Genocide). Oh, and of course The Burning Man of eco-artistry, and edu-tainment; the Kinetic Sculpture Race! (I haven’t been to BM since the 90’s when it was cool). ;)

These are things that will inspire business-zesty social entrepreneurs, sustainable agriculture, even permaculture-level environmental resilience and thus, not just more minimum wage jobs, but right livelihood for inspired people to prosper and proudly give their precious time to beloved communities. Not flipping off their Big Box boss and self medicating with plastic bottles of Popov Vodka and packs of Marlboros imbibing dystopian nihilism. Don’t do it, my daft and romantic rizzly siblings! Embrace your north star which may be right here in Arcata. 

These are the things that we got that other cities don’t . So fight Amazon in its effort to build its Trumpist empire here. Fight AI data centers as they try to take our sacred water and our bio-diverse, dynamic and gorgeous ecosystems to turn more profits for the 900 billionaires in the US instead of the 300 million working people. People who never support bombing schools in the Mid-East which bombs the budgets of our schools and health care. Tons of those people  love our progressive artful, decentralizing, increasingly bioregional booming green-new-deal-aspiring economy. 

We boom when we bloom native species and homegrown innovation, not when we submit to billionaire factories of famine by the same ten companies taking over wayyyy too many American Cities. That’s how to develop jobs and right livelihoods with pink pony pride in all and creative social justice. Go ahead, call me Woke. It just makes me prouder. 

Think Green-Glocally, Vote Bonpane. (from Buonpane which means Good Bread in Italian)

Genevieve Serna

Hi Anthony, When it comes to addressing the need for jobs, there isn’t one “silver bullet” solution that will fix a complex problem like this. So while the idea that more permissive development of national chains may on its face feel like a fix all to for regional employment, I don’t believe it would be. What I do fear it would do however is create a more hostile business environment for the local businesses, restaurants and artisans in the city that would have to compete directly with these national chains. I would love to see more economic and business development in our city but I would stand with a small, local business first over a larger chain. Thank you for your question. www.SernaForArcata.com

 

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