Is KMart the Next to Go?

Mike L says:

My New Year’s prediction: K-Mart closes in Billerica.

Mike, you beat me to it.  I think it’s better than even money.

The news story that prompted this idea reports that Sears Holding Corp. is closing between 100 and 120 stores next year.  Sears owns KMart stores.

Sears has not decided which stores will shut, but the Billerica store will likely appear on some Sears VP’s long list.  My evidence:

- It is sited in an aging, ugly, bloated, sad, dinosaur of a strip mall

- Sears does not appear to have a good relationship with its landlord, RD Management.  Remember back in April 2010 when the Zombie refused to host the Lions Carnival after 19 years?  RDM wrote a letter to the Lions calling out KMart as the tenant that vetoed the event.  It was a move that I’m sure pissed of Sears Corp. and distanced KMart from the community.

- Three establishments — Burlington Coat Factory, the Dollar Tree, and soon-to-open Big Lots — sell a lot of the same stuff.

- Retailers are leaving Billerica in droves — OfficeMax, and Fashion Bug hit the road following Friendly’s and D’Angelo’s restaurants.  This has nothing to do with KMart, but this is no longer a pattern, it’s a trend.  The writing is on the wall.

If you were the Sears Vice President tasked with cutting 120 locations, wouldn’t you take a long look at the Billerica store?

Even if we are wrong and the Billerica KMart survives these cuts, the Sears company is faring poorly, losing out to the likes of WalMart and Target.  Will the parent company survive?  If not early in 2012, is it only a matter of time before the KMart closes?

And where does that leave Billerica Mall Shops at Billerica?  Will KMart customers be pushed to Walmart in Chelmsford?  Will they take their grocery spending with them since a new Stop & Shop opened there?  Can the Zombie survive without KMart, its anchor, which at 84,000 square feet represents a quarter of the malls leasable space?  If you think Big Lots will simply take its place, consider that it will occupy only 30,000 square feet.  (Take a look at the current mall layout here.)

Moreover, where would that leave Billerica as a whole in terms of services available to its citizens and overall economic health?  Do we underestimate how much we depend on KMart?  We have no control over what will happen to KMart, but what can we do as citizens to attract new businesses?

Akeson Cell Tower Enrages Neighbors

I have stayed away from the Akeson cell phone tower debate so far.  As much a I enjoy spouting, I don’t like to spout on a subject I know little about.  I’ve had trouble following this story with all the board decisions, appeals, judge’s rulings, and other events, each one making the saga of this tower more complicated than the last.

Plus, I only have so much outrage to spend.  But when I read Carla Agustino’s report in the Minuteman last Thursday, my face turned red.  (She did a great job getting these quotes and the story was well-written.  Hope there will be a follow-up.)

Here’s some background before I get into the Zoning Board of Appeals, which green-lighted a huge cell tower near a soccer field last week.  The following is how I understand it — please correct any facts I may have wrong.

On the one side of the issue you have abutters to Akeson field and the Planning Board, who oppose the tower.  On the other, you have the Town Manager, the Board of Selectmen, and of course the cell phone people, who stand to make a profit, and I’m betting it’s a healthy one.  (I should add here that the town stands to pick up some tax revenue, too.)

Let me stop now to remind all staff, elected, and appointed people that your first responsibility is to represent and serve the citizen taxpayers of the town.  Not developers.  If the citizens have a need — in this case, a vehement objection to a cell phone tower — you start by doing everything you can to help them.  Or you bring the two sides together and try to work something out.

According to this story, neither of those two things happened here, with the exception of the Planning Board, which wasn’t backed up by anyone else.  Let’s look at some of the quotes from the article:

“We have a court order, what is Mark supposed to do, not issue it?” said ZBA Vice Chairman Richard Colantuoni. “Someone made the decision to not fight this thing and probably for a good reason.”

“To not fight this thing” is not a decision, it’s indecision.  And about that “good reason,” shouldn’t the ZBA know exactly what those good reasons are?

An abutter said:

“Apparently the selectmen and town manager can overrule the planning board, the judge did not overrule anything,” Christopher Curley said. “Town Manager [John] Curran gave up. No one was defending the abutters, the residents, or the people who play soccer in that field. There seems to be other options available, but bottom line the town wanted the revenue for this location.”

Look, you are not going to win every battle against big companies and their lawyers.  But no citizen should feel like that have to fight that battle alone.

Mr. Curley goes on:

“The 140-foot setback was not met, it needed variance,” he explained. “Billerica town bylaws say there should be no exception given to the 140 feet setback and states variance can only be given in a state of hardship, so why was it given?”

Excellent question.  Hello, ZBA?  Do you have an answer for your constituent?

ZBA member Ralph McKenna reasoned the appeal is not lawfully sound because according to town bylaws, an appeal must be made within 30 days. [Building commissioner Mark] LaLumiere stated the building permit was issued on Sept. 13, although Mr. Curley cited it was pulled on Sept. 23.

“The board of appeals received the appeal on Oct, 20, so there is no jurisdiction anyway,” McKenna said. “From what I understand, the petitioner is not on the court mandated abutter’s list, so he has no case, we have to follow laws.

You have got to be kidding me.  The ZBA is going with semantics and paperwork as an excuse?  He’s not on some list so his objection doesn’t matter?  This is unbelievable.

Colantuoni stressed that the concerns residents have are better suited for the selectmen, the town manager, or a judge, but not for the ZBA.

Translation: “Don’t blame me, blame someone else.”  I wish we had a word in English that meant the opposite of “leadership,” because that’s what this is.  Hideous.

“Whatever the decision of the selectmen, that’s their thing, we didn’t issue the variances based upon revenues to the town,” Colantuoni explained. “We make a decision and it’s recorded as well as the facts about why we made that decision. It’s a done deal, we can’t do anything about it. It’s a shame these are the type of people who are running this town.”

Wait, who is he talking about?  Himself?  Are these “type of people” others on the ZBA, or is he talking about the BOS or maybe the Town Manager or the PB?  I would like to know more about this.

A neighbor gets the reporter’s last word:

Many agreed that there is generally a lack of communication not only between the town officials and the residents, but also amongst the town’s governing boards.

“I am pretty ashamed to be in this town to be among you folks that cannot communicate properly. I have yet to get any certified mail yet I am told I am on the abutters list,” explained Jim Reinold.

Well said.  We have a series of boards that simply do not talk to each other.  It’s been my impression that there is a personal problem between people on the PB and the ZBA, and those sorts of grudges hurt the quality of government. In this case, the Akeson neighbors’ government completely failed them.  It sounds like multiple errors were made.

Listen, I understand that everyone mentioned in this story is a volunteer expect for the Town Manager (and of course the cell phone company and their attorneys).  They only have so much time to give to their boards.  But the neighbors are fighting this on their spare time, too.  They need help.  They deserve better.

Credit the Planning Board, who did stick their neck out for the neighborhood.  But the BOS, afraid of a lawsuit, folded.  It’s a bad precedent.  Companies can smell towns that fear litigation and feast on them.  They swing and big stick and weak towns usually cave.

Do I want my tax dollars spent on a lawsuit?  Who does?  But what I want even more is for my town to defend itself when challenged.  Not cower and cry.  (Remember, it was Chelmsford that saved Billerica from the Aspen 40B development after we surrendered.)

Speaking of lawsuits — still waiting on that Home Depot case to go against us.

5 Ways to Improve Your Town

Traffic to this blog is reaching record highs, and I think that’s an indication that people are increasingly interested in the retail drain that is the latest problem to plague Billerica from right now.  D’Angelo’s, Friendly’s, and now OfficeMax and Fashion Bug early next year — all closing with a few months’ time.  Meanwhile other towns in the same region, with similar highway access and socioeconomics, and in the exact same recession, are successfully attracting new, strong, and exciting business growth.

What else will we lose next year?  Is there anything we can do about it?

Yes, there is.  Here is how you can change this town for the better, starting in 2012.

1.  Pay Attention

Being fully aware of what is going on is the first step to changing it.  The traditional media outlets (Billerica Minuteman, Lowell Sun, occasionally the Boston Globe) are decent news sources.  Most of us read at least one of these. But it’s not enough.  Newer media is attempting to fill in the gaps.  Billerica.org has reporting like a newspaper, but its staff are residents, many of whom are elected officials.  Local blogs are expanding.  Facebook, Twitter, and other social media do contain a lot of noise, but you can find some good nuggets of news.  Some rumors you hear this way turn out to be true.  Finally, the Board of Selectmen meetings and Town Meeting sessions are all covered to start to finish by Billerica Access Television.  BATV is probably our most valuable form of communication, and we need to take better advantage of it.

Equally important to paying attention to what is happening is paying attention to what is not happening.  For example, we are not attracting new business or land development. By learning about what is happening around the region, we find out what is missing from our own town’s growth.

More on Burlington and Wegmans

I want to continue on this topic because clearly there is an interest here.  The question of whether Billerica can attract development that contributes to our quality of life (that is, stores, services, and restaurants that we can patronize) is an important question that should often be asked of town leadership.

Before I go any further, let me do a better job of defining the problem.  Here is a list of the establishments that have opened and closed since I moved here 5 years ago:

Closed Places

• Lincoln Liquors (1)
• Coffee Emporium
• Friendly’s (2)
• D’Angelo’s

New Places

• Towne Fair Tire (3)
• Dollar Tree
• Liberty Bell roast beef
• 7 Nana restaurant
• Planet Fitness

And that’s it, folks!  Not much new activity to speak of in the town of 40,000+ people.  Worse, almost every time we added something, we lost something else.  We are extremely fortunate to have 7 Nana, which has great food and is a lot of fun.  (Too bad I can’t afford to eat there more than a few times a year.)  We should have a dozen others like it.  I’m sure I left out some items on both lists — please add to them.

[Notes:

(1) To be fair, Lincoln Liquors simply moved to Treble Cove Plaza, so we didn't really lose it.  But it does leave the town center without a liquor store.  This is like Los Angelis not having an NFL franchise.  Yes, you can get beer and wine at Jim's Quick Stop in Convenient Plaza.  Right next to the live bait.

(2) A "for lease" has sprouted up on the former Friendly's front yard.  I suppose the real estate listing reads something like, "Small restaurant property with prime view of Mount Rosa and a 30-second drive to an eroding big-box drug store; 50,000 vehicles per day past site and zero foot traffic."  Any takers??

(3) This actually shouldn't be on the list, because it opened just before I got here.  Also, it replaced a Burger King, I believe, so whether or not this is a step up is open for debate.]

In the comments to the original post, Rick says:

we are likely to become that pond around which all the expensive real estate is built. In keeping with that scenario, I can already see the surrounding towns standing on the piers and boat docks plucking away our best and largest fish one at a time.

This is a great analogy, and we should use it again.  And he is right; it’s not just Burlington.  Chelmsford just got a a new Stop & Shop.  Wilmington’s recession-busting building boom on Route 38 has been well-documented and was more than once referred to by Billerica BOS candidates.  Tewksbury has successfully instituted mixed-use zoning and several leaders there have been quoted about positive economic development. And that’s just our direct abutters.

They are beating us.  Badly.  Does this bother us at all?  Do we have any pride?

InterestedReader says:

I clicked on the link and it showed Burlington’s medium family income as $104k. Also, the daytime population of Burlington triples with people who work in all of the nearby high-tech companies with high paying jobs. So yes, I think demographics probably had a lot to do with it.

The census distinguishes between family and household incomes.    I listed the household median, but the difference is negligible.  Anyway, Mr. Reader is making my point for me.  Good development begets good development.  Remember our former Town Manager, Bill Williams, was run out of town for publicly saying Billerica needed more curb appeal.  We should have lined up behind him because he was right.  Instead we shook our finger because our feelings were hurt.  The Selectmen and Town Meeting (of which I am a part) has done nothing to improve quality of life since completing the library, and that was over 10 years ago.  These sort of improvements are among the things that businesses (like Wegmans) are looking for when scouting a place to land.  Not only does a nice town help attract future employees, is demonstrates that the town cares about its businesses.

We say we are “business friendly.”  Every town does.  But here all it means is, “we will give you tax breaks.”

Mike says:

Touche on your last point, Jeff. It’s far easier to complain than to step up and act.

Yes, and we have a lot of work to.   Other towns have already done this work, some of them a decade or more ago.  That’s whay they are ahead.  Meanwhile, with our three old Market Baskets squatting in their aging, overgrown strip malls, we are the town that time forgot.  We need to do a ton of work just to stay even with competing towns.

In the coming weeks, I will outline what sort of work needs to be done and how interested people can help.

Your Bill for Three Wars

While GOP candidates snipe over moon colonies, a gaping hole in our economy is the price that we will pay for war.  According to the Wall Street Journal, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are costing us around $4 trillion.  And we are borrowing this money, of course, so you can tack on future interest costs to that.

A million dollars isn’t a lot of money any more, but $4 trillion still is.  Here is what that looks like:

$4,000,000,000,000

Or, divided by 110,000,000 American households, your family’s share is $36,300. For starters.

Maybe that puts your $4500 property bill in perspective.

Lost Again: Burlington Lands Wegmans

New York state grocery legend Wegmans is coming to Burlington. Yeah, it's better than Market Basket.

Chances are you have never been to a Wegmans.  Unless you are from upstate New York or have friends or family there, you probably have no idea what it is.  I certainly didn’t until going to college in western Pennsylvania.  No Wegmans there, either, but I did have a friend from New York who talked so much about the place we had no choice but to ridicule him constantly for it.

After all, it’s only a grocery store.

I was young and I did not yet understand the emotional attachment that some people have to stores.  It’s not a stretch to say that Wegmans has a cult following, and judging by local reports of the first Wegmans in New England recently opening in Northboro, it appears to be well-deserved.  More services than Roche Brothers and with lower prices, Wegmans — a family-owned grocery store chain — has done what the DeMoulas family couldn’t: create a phenomenon.

That phenomenon is coming to Burlington in 2013.  According to a Globe story, Nordblom Company is developing a parcel that will include a Wegmans grocery store and several locally-owned restaurants. These will not be down-market mall-town chain eateries, either, says the developer:

“We want the focus to be on getting the best operators, so we’re talking to independent and chef-driven restaurants, as opposed to chains,’’ said Todd Fremont-Smith, senior vice president of development. “We believe that’s what the market wants: something more experience-based than just a shopping center with a large food court.’’

Sounds nice, right?  When was the last time you saw a quote anything like this about a development in Billerica?

The project will be part of Northwest Park, currently a forest of old office parks and parking lots along Middlesex Turnpike.  You have probably driven by the site of Northwest Park hundreds of times on your way to Burlington Mall and thought nothing of it.  And why would you?  There’s nothing there worth seeing right now.  But Burlington is trying to turn this neighborhood into a large, mixed-use alternative to the office park and retail disasters that sprawl built.  The Wegmans is among the first real proposals that follow that plan.  (By the way, Newton is getting one, too.)

I wrote in a Minuteman column two years ago that the Iverson Ford site should be converted to big farmer’s market and that  Billerica should become a food mecca.  Burlington has beat us to the punch.

That we failed to land Wegmans is a loss, but if we never even tried to get the legendary grocer, that would be an even bigger loss.  This is exactly the sort of economic development we should be going after.  Wegmans would have been perfect off one of the Route 3 exits.  Imagine the economic growth it would have spurred, not to mention giving us a second grocery choice beyond the three moribund Market Baskets we have.

It’s nice that we are attracting high tech companies like E-Ink (albeit with boffo tax breaks) and are going after biotech to shore up the sinking industrial space hidden away in the backstage areas of our giant town.  The Assessing Deparement gets credit for that.  But how long is it going to be until we get some development in here we can actually use?

Good News: Garrison’s and Electronic Voting

All right, enough bad news for this week.  Two items on the positive side:

Garrison’s Restaurant, at the intersection of 129 and 3A, is finally open again.  The remodel is complete and that corner is starting to look OK again.  Next door, the small strip mall formerly housing the D’Angelo’s sandwich shop is sill vacant.  Reports are that Cumberland Farms will turn it into a giant gas station and convenience store.  I presume it will compete with the 7-11 across the street, which already serves the neighborhood with convenience items.

Also, electronic voting is coming to Town Meeting.  As reported by Billerica.org, Moderator Gil Moreira will bring an article this Spring that would ask TM to authorize it.  A system in Chelsmford cost $10,000.  Ours would cost more because our TM has more representatives, and the funding source has not been identified (Town Manager John Curran is looking for a grant).  But I can’t imagine any TMRs speaking out against procuring this system regardless of cast to the taxpayer.  The system allows total transparency between the TMR and his or her constituents, automatically posting each TMR’s votes (yea, nay, abstain), which could be relayed by BATV to viewers at home.  And if the town does not post voting results to its web site, I will obtain them and you will certainly be able to see them here at the blog.

With two selectmen, the Moderator, and a teller (who would lose her job!) speaking in support to Billerica.org, I just don’t see anyone speaking against the proposal or TM voting it down.