NEWS

Asheville businesses fight to keep downtown local

Caitlin Byrd
cbyrd@citizen-times.com
Urban Outfitters opened in 2009, around the same time as the locally owned Spiritex store.

ASHEVILLE – When Marylou Marsh-Sanders opened a clothing store in downtown Asheville six years ago, all eyes were on her two-story neighbor.

The brown building on the corner of Haywood and College streets had been a CVS store since the 1970s, but its time at this busy downtown intersection was coming to an end. By the time Marsh-Sanders opened Spiritex in 2009, the red-lettered CVS sign was long gone and the national chain retailer Urban Outfitters had arrived.

The response from independent business owners was swift and clear: Keep Asheville local.

Now, six years later, downtown business owners find themselves fighting the same fight on a different street.

Their attention has pivoted one block up to Lexington Avenue, where it has been announced that an Anthropologie store will be moving in at 37 N. Lexington Ave. — sandwiching the women's high-end apparel store between a local clothing boutique and Lexington Avenue Brewery.

One national retail chain in downtown Asheville is one thing, said Marsh-Sanders. But two? That could threaten everything — from commercial rental prices to the very character of downtown Asheville.

"Once one chain weasels their way in, more will follow," she said. "Once that happens, how will you ever be able to come back to what it used to be? After everyone pioneered and worked and fought to make downtown Asheville what it is today, all of it could be wiped away if we aren't careful. We've got to hold onto that. There has to be a way."

The petition

Last week, Rebecca Hecht created an online petition calling for the city of Asheville to regulate and place a moratorium on chain and formula stores in downtown.

Within two days of posting the petition on Change.org, it had garnered 500 signatures. Four days in, it reached 1,000. By Friday, the volume of signatures neared 2,000.

Hecht, who owns Adorn Salon on College Street, said she drafted the petition as a way to let Anthropologie, property owners and the city know what people think about the idea of creating some sort of plan that might keep chains and formula stores out of downtown Asheville.

"We all feel like it's time to start the conversation about how do we guide the development of downtown. It's grown so fast over the last few years," said Hecht, who also serves on the Asheville Downtown Commission. "That's the mood on the Commission. We'd like to protect the unique, vibrant downtown that we've all created and start the conversations about how we can do it."

City attorney Robin Currin said Asheville does not have any restrictions or zoning ordinances that are aimed at keeping the number of chain businesses in downtown low.

However, other cities do.

After a Ralph Lauren opened in 2005 on the Main Street of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, the town adopted a zoning ordinance a year later that limits stores and restaurants in its downtown to companies with fewer than 14 identical outlets and fewer than three standardized features, like trademarks, menus or employee uniforms.

In 2006, citizens and elected officials in Bristol, Rhode Island, adopted an ordinance that bans formula stores larger than 2,500 square feet or that take up more than 65 feet of street frontage downtown. Smaller formula stores have to apply for a special use permit and must not detract from the district's uniqueness or contribute to what it calls the "nationwide trend of standardized downtown offerings."

Other cities have taken similar actions.

But Currin said the city of Asheville is bound by G.S. 160A, a North Carolina statute that dictates what cities and municipalities can do with their zoning.

"A zoning ordinance may regulate and restrict the height, number of stories and size of buildings and other structures, the percentage of lots that may be occupied, the size of yards, courts and other open spaces, the density of population, the location and use of buildings, structures and land," it reads.

In other words, Currin said, businesses cannot be kept out of downtown Asheville by tenant.

"We can't just do whatever we want to do," Currin said. "We have our laws that we have to follow."

But downtown business owners fear that if something is not done, Asheville could lose the local identity that makes it so special — a process that they have seen played out in other cities.

Pedestrians walk past the Urban Outfitters at College and Haywood Streets on Friday. Urban Outfitters opened a location downtown in 2009.

King-sized fears

King Street in Charleston, South Carolina, once belonged to the locals.

Though some mom-and-pop shops remain on the commercial thoroughfare, the proliferation of chains cannot be ignored.

A sprawling, four-story Forever 21 sits in the heart of the King Street Fashion District. A Chipotle opened on the street four months ago.

Dean Peterson, general manager of Tops for Shoes, remembers it wasn't always like that.

"King Street is lovely, but 20 years ago it was kind of like what we are now — it was unique and different," he said.

Jamee Haley, the executive director of Lowcountry Local First, a nonprofit independent business advocacy group in Charleston, has seen the impacts of these chain stores firsthand.

"We no longer have businesses that serve the needs of the community that lives downtown," she said, citing salons, shoe repair shops, dry cleaners and hardware stores. "Even the legacy businesses are selling because of rising property taxes and deals that are just too good for them to pass up."

Haley said an empty downtown lot that sold for $1.5 million a year ago sold this year for $8 million.

"The only way to make money on that acre is to put in luxury condos or a hotel," she said. "Additionally, we are dealing with absentee landlords who are not invested in our place and are unresponsive to the needs of their tenants. National businesses take up a large footprint and create large retail spaces that are hard to fill once they leave."

Franzi Charen, the executive director of Asheville Grown Business Alliance, has been leading the "go local" charge since the organization's founding in 2009.

It was Urban Outfitters moving into downtown Asheville that prompted the creation of the group in the first place.

"We all want a downtown that we can live, work and play in, and we must prioritize the needs of residents in our community over those that only wish to extract resources," Charen said. "Corporate interests and Wall Street profits have dictated the direction of hundreds of downtowns; we've seen what happens and seem to be following suit. We must look 20 years down the road at the real implications of these decisions based on short-term profit and outside interests."

Charen said this is why the community must look at other solutions to keeping downtown Asheville local in the future.

"While (a ban or regulation on chains) could buy us time, it is not the remedy to creating a resilient community," she said. "There are communities developing interesting solutions that help to build a stronger local business community not dependent on tourism. In New York City they've established a fund to incubate worker cooperatives. Utah incentivizes downtown property owners to sell to local businesses over national chains or outside developers."

However, local business owners and leaders alike say chains downtown do not necessarily mean the end of downtown Asheville as we know it.

Silver linings

Kit Cramer, president and CEO of the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, is a downtown resident.

The offerings of local downtown establishments contribute to why she lives downtown. However, she added that sometimes chains can keep Asheville's economy competitive and growing.

"I love shopping and eating and being entertained at local establishments. It's part of the reason I live downtown. That being said, I also love seeing a quality rehabilitation of a vacant storefront. That infusion of dollars not only creates jobs, it will attract more potential customers — both locals and visitors — for all the businesses in the area," she said. "That means the businesses profit and are able to pay the sales and property taxes, which allow us to provide the community services of which we all take advantage."

The property at 37 N. Lexington Ave. has sat vacant for years. Before Urban Outfitters — parent company of Anthropologie — moved into the former CVS store on Haywood Street, the drugstore had been empty for almost a year.

"The best way to keep our independent businesses is to help them be successful. We do that by growing jobs and marketing the community so that businesses have a good environment in which to grow," Cramer said. "The Chamber is a proponent of business. We have both independent and chain businesses as members. Sometimes people forget that franchises are often owned by local people who employ other local people and who pay their taxes, give to charities and are involved in the community in many ways. It doesn't have to be all or nothing."

When Marsh-Sanders opened Spiritex, she worried about what would happen across the street from her storefront.

Though she can't say whether being across from the clothing retailer has resulted in more foot traffic for her business, she said she was pleased that the store made an attempt to blend into its surroundings.

"They seemed to adapt to make it look like Asheville. They were like the chameleon box store," she said. "They tried to really do their build-outs and everything to appeal to the community. They didn't just worm their way into a spot and keep repeating what they always do."

Anthropologie would not comment about its plans for the space on Lexington.

Marsh-Sanders said her real fear with chains isn't about a specific store. It comes down to one word: homogenization.

"What makes Asheville Asheville is the people, is the community, the artists, the unique designers trying to make a living and the business owners trying to have their own flair and own uniqueness," she said. "If we start to look and feel like everywhere else, what will happen to our 'Keep Asheville Weird' motto? What will the tag line be then? We have more of the same, but better? If a whole bunch of box stores and chains come into downtown, it will change the flavor of Asheville so much. We have to find a balance."

Jeff Milchen, the co-founder and co-director of the American Independent Business Alliance, said Asheville is not alone in those efforts.

The great unknown

Milchen describes this challenge of keeping certain areas chain-free as a fairly consistent issue among communities nationwide.

"The larger trend of gentrification, to use the more generic term, with above-market rate increases in rent and the resulting increase of local rent has become a huge topic in this past year. We're seeing a lot of other cities with organizing fronts who are exploring different ideas," he said.

One idea Milchen expects to see more of in the coming months is commercial real estate land trusts. They allow people to collectively invest in and own a commercial property in town and make a profit, but with the stipulation that the property can only be leased out to local businesses and residents instead of leasing for the greatest rate of return.

But Milchen said cities don't necessarily need a moratorium, regulation or ban on chain stores to make a difference.

In the 1990s, Milchen was organizing go-local efforts in Boulder, Colorado. His group was exploring a citywide cap on formula businesses of all kinds and a limitation on square footage of retail chain operations. It was not adopted, but Milchen said it still made a difference.

"Even though it didn't pass into law, they were really powerful tools for advancing public awareness and creating a really healthy debate in the community that led people to taking much more proactive measures when thinking about growth," he said.

And that is what small-business owners want to do moving forward.

Peterson, an Asheville native who has been the manager at Tops For Shoes for more than 20 years, said there's no stopping Anthropologie at this point.

The focus, he said, needs to be on what downtown Asheville can do for its future.

"I've seen both ends of it. I've seen it bustling pre-mall. I saw it boarded up with drug dealers, and I've seen it come back. I love it. It's unique," he said. "It's Asheville."