It seems that the buzz word in retail development for the past five years is "Big Box", referring to large-sized retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Borders, Home Depot, Lowes, etc. It seems every community these days are trying to land their own big boxes. The Cleveland area and it's surrounding communities have had their big boxes popping up like crazy, and I recently read where the W.117th & I-90 area is about to secure their own piece of the big box action. This is an area where I used to work back in the day, and while it could use some cleanup, I don't think landing a few big corporate retailers is the answer.

Fortunately the residents of my community have repeatedly voted down developer attempts to land big boxes in our city. It seems that Target really wants to get their hands on our population's shopping dollars. Nevermind the fact that I can drive 15 minutes west, 15 minutes east, 20 minutes south, and soon to be 10 minutes north, and get to a Target (and there's even more within 20 minutes if I go NW, SW, etc). I'm really wondering at what point these retailers are going to stop and say "OK, I think we've got this region covered". If I really wanted to shop at Target, I have no problem driving 15 minutes to get there. There is no need to have one in my backyard. They're just going to be taking my money from the other store and moving it to this new store. They're spreading the region's shoppers' dollars thinner across their stores, and cutting into their own profits. Those who talk about job growth, I argue that this is minimal because adding a new store takes business from the other store, so fewer workers are still needed at the other stores when a new one opens. I hope these retailers realize (VERY SOON) that the NE Ohio region is getting very oversaturated, and they should be content with the locations they have.

This entry was posted by Brad, on Wednesday, June 08, 2005. You can leave your response.