Bennington, Vermont, limits retail store size

The Selectboard in Bennington, Vermont, adopted a zoning bylaw in January prohibiting any store from exceeding 50,000 square feet in one part of town and 75,000 square feet in two other areas. Wal-Mart wants to raze its existing 50,000 sq. ft. store and build a new one containing 110,000 square feet. More than 1,000 residents recently signed petitions to rescind the bylaw, so the size limit will face a townwide vote April 5. The limit “levels the playing field for all businesses,” said Alicia Romac of Citizens for a Greater Bennington. “It will increase competition because people know they won’t be dwarfed by a superstore six months after they’ve opened.” Wal-Mart has started to evade government limits on the size of stores by splitting new stores into separate side-by-side components. Calvert County in southern Maryland last year enacted regulations limiting stores in small town centers such as Dunkirk, on Chesapeake Bay, to 75,000 square feet. Wal-Mart recently responded by announcing plans to build a 74,998-square-foot store and a 22,689-square-foot garden center next to each other — but separate, thus defeating the county’s attempt at limiting the size and location of big-box stores. Al Norman, founder of Sprawl-Busters, a Greenfield, Massachusetts-based group that helps communities fight big-box stores, told The Washington Post that Wal-Mart “will try any tactic that they think they can get away with,” despite the clear intent of local ordinances. u