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writings
The Damariscotta 35,000 sq. ft.
size cap won by a comfortable margin, 747 to 456, in voting on March 21. It
is reported to be one of the highest turnouts for voting in the town's
history. CONA is proud to have helped in the success of this vote,
with co-sponsoring the showing of an anti-Wal-Mart film, "The High Cost of
Low Cost," and sponsoring a forum of anti-big box activists from Belfast.
Commentary -- Small
Town Growth vs Cheap Pair of Underwear
By Kay Liss
The town I grew up in, on
the north shore of Long Island, New York, had a large portion that was
historic, even older than Damariscotta. In fact, plaques on houses
boasted of George Washington having slept there.
But, unfortunately, there was no planning in the 50s and early 60s, and
soon the town began to look like many other towns on Long Island – a
hodgepodge of concrete buildings, with no aesthetically redeeming
qualities. After all, the primary concern was for function, not form.
Now it is truly a nightmare to try to drive down the once tree-lined
main street.
After living away for a couple of decades, I came back to Long Island, to the east end, where there was still open space, a sense of place
and history. But then big boxes started moving out farther and farther.
The last town I lived in before moving to Maine was at the eastern-most
end, Montauk, in the town of East Hampton.
East Hampton, as Al Norman mentioned in his talk last Saturday, is one
of the many towns in the country that has enacted a retail size cap, a
25,000 sq. ft. cap in fact – this, in a town at least 10 times the size
of Damariscotta. They’re serious about trying to preserve what they
have.
So, here we are in 2006 with four decades of town planning behind us.
However, in Maine, perhaps because there still is comparatively so much
open space, towns have been later in passing zoning laws to plan for
orderly development. There are density laws for residential development
in towns like Damariscotta, but, perhaps not expecting huge, outsized
stores like the one proposed for Damariscotta to ever come along, many
towns have not felt the need to pass size limits on commercial
development.
Wal-Marts and other big box stores have been spreading across the land,
almost without our noticing at first, since the mid-1960s. But in 40
years, mostly in the 90s, they have taken over huge swaths of land in
many parts of the country. I think if most people looked at a map to see
exactly what this looks like, they would be astonished and begin to
think about what they are allowing to happen.
Let’s use this new planning tool, a reasonable size cap, to help
Damariscotta and Newcastle grow in a proportionate and more orderly way.
As Al Norman said, “it’s not so much how big you grow but how you grow
big.” And, also as he said, caring about our town – aesthetically,
socially, economically – should be more important than buying a cheaper
pair of underwear.
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