Joint Dismissal in Conservation Commission Case

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The neighbors of the Mackin French King parcel and the defendants,
Greenfield Investors, have signed a joint dismissal today of the appeal
in the Conservation Commission case in Franklin County Superior Court.
This appeal was filed before the amended Order of Conditions.

The neighbors believe that they essentially won one of their major
battles--which was to force the landowner to clean up his polluted
wetland, and to force the developer to move its massive store off
Wetland 4. The issue of size was not addressed, but will be in the next
phase. We are releasing the following statement:

"When we began this process 3 years ago, the Conservation Commission was
claiming that wetland 4 was not even a wetland, and the developer
presented plans to put its store and parking lot over that
wetland--destroying it completely.

Now, as a result of our intervention, the wetland must be restored---not
replicated elsewhere---and in fact it will be expanded. The Conservation
Commission review was so flawed, that the state Department of
Environmental Protection had to file its own appeal of the Commission's
decision---and now we have a wetland resource that will be protected and
enhanced.

The neighbors remain concerned that to build a store this size the 100
foot buffer zone around this project had to be destroyed and paved over
in many areas---but we do not feel that court action would resolve this
problem. While the Conservation Commission ignored our concerns about
the incompatible size of this building--two and a half times larger than
Stop & Shop--we believe this issue will have more traction before the
Planning Board.

Now we move onto Phase II of this review, which is the special permit,
Major Development Review and site plan review of the store itself. The
homeowners in the Canada Hill neighborhood, and the whole eastern part
of town, will continue to assert that this proposal is incompatible with
a residential neighborhood, and that in its present state is
unacceptable---without safeguards and limitations to protect the
neighbors homes and property.

This project is located in the French King overlay district, whose
purpose is to create an attractive entryway into town, and to 'minimize
strip development and traffic congestion.' This overlay district was set
aside as a special overlay to 'protect scenic and naturaal features.'
Placing a big box store in this gateway to our town defies all rational
land use planning.

The neighbors also feel that an enormous superstore is incompatible with
existing uses, and will detract from the character and scale of
neighboring properties. The project as proposed has no screening, no
buffering, and no open spaces---it is a wall of concrete surrounded by a
sea of asphalt.

But the enormity of this project should concern all residents in
Greenfield and surrounding towns. We believe that a careful review of
this proposal will show that it will have a significant adverse fiscal
impact on the town, and surrounding towns, that it will adversely impact
adjacent properties, the neighborhood, and the environment, and that it
will result in unsafe vehicular circulation, reducing the service level
of traffic for the full length of High Street and surrounding
intersections. This project will also detract from the downtown as a
commercial center, and undermine the revitalization focus of current
efforts in our central commercial area.

We will be asking the Planning Board to dramatically scale back the size
of this project---which they have the right to do---and to limit the
time of operation and extent of facilities to protect the public health
and welfare.

This big box store three times the size of a football field is the wrong
size and in the wrong place for Greenfield and area towns. We hope that
these arguments will not be lost on the members of the Planning and
Zoning Board."

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Published on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by Creators.com

'Local' Goes Loco

by Jim Hightower

In "Through the Looking Glass," Humpty Dumpty declared, "When I use a word, it means what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."

Mr. Dumpty would have loved living in our era of corporate-speak, when even a plain word of obvious meaning can be dumped down the semantical rabbit hole to be swirled and twirled by marketing meisters.

Then — sproing! — out it pops, looking like the same word, but now burdened with a convoluted connotation that is the very opposite of what the word appears to mean.

This corporatization of language is presently being applied to the common term, "local" — as in: right here, in the immediate vicinity, this neck of the woods, hereabouts, our backyard, etc.

In the past few years, "local" has become an important commercial term, as small businesses have proudly attached it to their products, services and presence in the marketplace. The term differentiates them from the gigantism, plasticity, aloofness and frequent abusiveness of faraway, big-box, chain operations. The message conveyed by these local enterprises is that "we are your neighbors, you know us and we know you, we share a community bond beyond just taking your money."

"Local" is a growing movement in American commerce. Some 30,000 small businesses have organized themselves into "local business alliances" in more than 130 cities. The movement is phenomenally popular with consumers, who like the personality and uniqueness of homegrown enterprises and prefer to buy from people who keep consumer dollars moving through the local economy.

As a result of the movement's financial success, many more businesses are joining the local push. For example, such down-home outfits as Barnes & Noble, CVS, Frito Lay, HSBC, Starbucks, Unilever and Wal-Mart are trying to get in on the action.

Believe it or not, these giants are using TV ads and other promotional outlets to hawk their centralized, standardized and globalized brands as "local." Here are a few of the twists they've made in the straightforward definition of the term:

— HSBC, a sprawling, British-based financial conglomerate, has thousands of branch banks in localities across the globe (from Boston to Brazil), so it has labeled itself, "the world's local bank."

— Barnes & Noble, the biggest bookseller in the world, is trying to scale its image down to mom-and-pop level by proclaiming that "all book-selling is local."

— Hellmann's, a division of the Dutch-owned Unilever conglomerate, is claming that its mayonnaise is a local product because most of its ingredients come from somewhere in North America — a 9.5 million square mile stretch of "local."

— Starbucks, the ubiquitous 16,000-store caffeine purveyor, has been losing market share to cool, local shops that are the opposite of cookie-cutter chain stores, so the giant is opening a series of pretend-funky shops designed by corporate headquarters to present a "local vibe" — a consumer hoax that includes no display at all of the Starbucks name and logo.

These examples are closer to loco than they are to local!

Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance notes that the corporate pretenders are often boosted by economic development officials.

She recently reported on a "buy local" campaign in Fresno, Calif., in which county authorities sold out the true locals (as well as the English language) by proclaiming, "Just so you know, buying local means any store in your community: mom-and-pop stores, national chains, big-box stores — you name it."

This "ya'll come" perversion of reality is supported by PR consultants for giant marketers. As rationalized by Michelle Barry, an executive of the Hartman Group: "There is a belief that you can only be local if you are a small and authentic brand. This isn't necessarily true; big brands can use the notion of local to their advantage as well. ... It's a different way of thinking about local that is not quite as literal."

Wow, Humpty Dumpty would be proud of her! By that definition, "Made in China" could be local.

To connect with the "literal" world of local business, contact the Institute for Local Self-Reliance: www.ilsr.org.

© 2009 Creators Syndicate

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.