Thursday, August 10, 2006
By THOMAS RYLL, Columbian staff writer

Big-box stores are:

1. Blights on the urban landscape and hometown economy, fouling the view with their packing-crate architecture, incinerating small businesses, and voraciously consuming open space with parking lots the size of small countries.

2. Supersized landmarks that have become a fact of modern life, settling in with their familiar and necessarily no-frills designs, and spoiling us with extraordinary selections of Chinese goods and abundant, free spots for every SUV and minivan in town.

Regardless of where you land on the debate, this is certain: County commissioners are taking steps to make it at least somewhat tougher to land these larger-than-life establishments in the county. "I honestly believe that big-box stores have costs to the community that aren't always apparent," said Commissioner Steve Stuart on Wednesday afternoon. "They might have low prices at the cash register, but we all end up paying those hidden costs."

At a Wednesday morning work session, Stuart and Commissioner Marc Boldt told planners to draft new rules that would require conditional-use permits for certain big-box stores in three store-size and zoning categories.

The effect: Under existing rules, three of nine category combinations require the permits. With the commissioners' proposed changes, conditional-use permits would be required for seven of the nine combinations.

Now, big stores are permitted outright in six category combinations; that would be reduced to two.

Stuart said he sees the permit-tightening as the first step in a process that could later include new rules for such things as analysis of economic impacts, and design requirements to keep big-box stores from looking like painted refrigerator cartons.

"I would never say all big-box stores are bad," he said. "But we need to see what the impacts are. Some of these stores don't pay their employees a living wage and have no benefits, and workers end up on public assistance even while they are employed." At the same time, "small businesses that pay quality wages are driven out."

As for the county's rules, "you can put a Costco in, but a church needs a conditional-use permit," Boldt said.

It will take several months to put any new rules into effect, and any projects in the system until then won't be affected. And Rich Lowry, the county's attorney, cautioned Boldt and Stuart that while a conditional-use permit is theoretically more difficult to get, the language of the standard is plenty fuzzy.

When a project needs a conditional-use permit, a county hearings examiner makes a decision that can be appealed to the commissioners. To reject a project, it must be ruled "significantly detrimental to the health, safety or general welfare of persons working in the neighborhood."

"The hearings examiners have had a heck of a time trying to apply that standard," Lowry said. "It's an awfully awkward one."

Big-box stores variously known as value retailers, superstores and category killers (after the corporate goal of eliminating competition) earn their most common name from their architecture. Standardized facades "unique to no place," in the words of a Columbia University report customers delivered by automobile and huge parking lots are the norm.

County rules divide "general retailer" businesses by size: the smallest at 25,000 to 100,000 square feet of "gross floor area"; the next at 100,000 to 200,000 square feet; and, finally, larger than 200,000 square feet. The latter category, said Rich Carson, director of community development, is "almost mythical." The only project of that size was approved in 1993 and involved a combined Home Base (146,784 square feet) and Albertsons store (99,376 square feet) on Fourth Plain Boulevard in the Orchards area. Home Base fell into the "category killed" class and the store is no longer there.

Big-box stores are allowed, by permit or outright, in only three of six retail-store zones: community commercial, limited commercial and highway commercial.

The highway commercial zone is what Carson called the "most intensive"; big retail stores in all three size categories are now allowed outright there. Under the commissioners' planned rule change, proposed projects in the two largest size categories would need conditional-use permits.

Wednesday morning, Stuart was eager to advance his cause. "Move it on," he told planning staff members. "Get it moving."

A parade of big boxes (unincorporated county)

Store Year approved Location Size (gross floor area, square feet)

Fred Meyer 1992 117th Avenue and 76th Street 165,602

Home Base/Albertsons 1993 Fourth Plain Boulevard (Orchards) 246,160 (146,784/99,376)

Fred Meyer 1995 Tenney Road (Salmon Creek) 171,200

Home Depot 1997 72nd Avenue 133,122 store/13,789 garden center

Wal-Mart 1999 Hazel Dell 148,500

Lowe's 2001 117th Avenue/76th Street 139,879 store/36,345 garden center

Costco 2002 72nd Avenue 143,463 store/5,200 tire center

Salmon Creek

Commercial center In progress 134th Street near I-205 176,672

Source: Clark County Department of Community Development, Type II site plan review process