Big-box retailing consists of oversized stores, especially in suburban and exurban areas. The proliferation of big-box retail stores has been detrimental to small businesses and to employment standards. Big- box retailers vary in market niches. Some big-box retail stores specialize in one kind of retail good. For example, Best Buy and Circuit City sell electronics while Home Depot and Lowe's sell home improvement products. These big-box retailers are sometimes also referred to as category killers. On the other hand, some big-box retail stores sell a variety of products with no particular niche, such as discount department stores like Wal-Mart and Target and warehouse clubs like Sam's Club.

What characterizes "big-box" retail?
Sprawl experts cite a number of features that typify big-box retail. Big-box retail stores:

• Occupy more than 50,000 square feet of space.
• Profit from large sales volumes.
• Rely on shoppers who arrive at the store by car.
• Include acres of parking and occupy a large footprint.
• Create site development that neglects any community or pedestrian amenities.
• Pervade almost every community and provide no unique culture, products, or identity.

How big-box stores contribute to sprawl
Big-box retail exacerbates sprawl. Since big-box retailers need a large space to build their stores, they rarely choose urban infill locations for new development and opt instead to locate in suburbs and exurbs, furthering the movement of economic activity away from the urban cores. Urban residents without cars cannot easily access these stores. In most cases, big-box stores support automobile dependence. They usually have very large parking lots and occupy a large footprint. Most big-box retail stores are not easily accessible by public transportation. Read on to find out about seven harms of big-box retail.

Harm #1: Big-box stores are detrimental to small businesses.
Metropolitan residents with cars may choose to shop at big-box stores because of their low prices and because of the convenience of a large variety of products housed in one building. In this way, big-box retail takes business from local "mom and pop" shops. Worse, big-box stores have the ability to undercut local, homegrown retailers with lower prices because of their sheer size and economies of scale. In many towns across America, big-box retailers moving into a community has been the death knell for local small businesses. A 1997 study by Kenneth Stone of Iowa State University found that the average Iowa consumer spent 42 percent more money in department stores, primarily discount big-box stores, in 1996 than he or she did in 1983. Over the same period, Iowa consumers spent up to 59 percent less in retail establishments of every kind, from grocery stores (11 percent less) to shoe stores (33 percent less) to men's and boy's stores (59 percent less.)

Harm #2: Big-box stores are detrimental to job quality standards.
One of the biggest limitations of retailing as a form of economic development is the fact that retail jobs can seldom sustain a family. Retail jobs most often pay lower than a living wage. In fact, many retail jobs have pay scales that hover near minimum wage. Retail jobs also are most commonly part-time jobs with fewer hours and no medical benefits. Also, retail jobs typically lack career tracks. The chances of significant advancement from a retail job are slim. Unionized grocery stores are the only exception to the poverty-wage problem. But without a union, most retail jobs are dead-end jobs that fail to support working families.

Harm #3: Loss of natural resources
When big-box retail stores locate in farmland, wetlands, or green space, they eliminate natural resources and open space. According to the American Farmland Trust, the United States loses 3,000 acres of productive farmland to sprawl everyday. This is the equivalent of all the acreage of Delaware every year.

Harm #4: Loss of uniqueness of place
As big-box retailers spread across the country and wipe out local businesses in their wake, America becomes more homogeneous and the unique character of individual communities is lost. In 2004, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the entire state of Vermont as one of eleven Most Endangered Historic Places. Wal-Mart is slated to open seven new 150,000+ square foot stores in Vermont, overwhelming the existing character of the state's architecture and local culture. Historic villages and picturesque rural landscapes are threatened by the onslaught of big-box retail stores. Local businesses and environmental standards in Vermont are also potential victims of the big-box intrusion.

Harm #5: Losses caused by main street and mall abandonment
Dead malls, greyfields, and ghostboxes are nicknames for vacated retail space. America is awash in excess retail space. The National Trust for Historic Preservation estimates that we have 38 square feet of store space for every man, woman and child.

In almost every region, the plague of over-built retail is evident. The program director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Main Street Center has testified that cities with too much retail space suffer all kinds of hidden costs--in addition to whatever subsidies they grant. When just one Main Street store, with two floors of 2,000 square feet, goes from being occupied and busy to being vacant, the total cost to the local economy is almost $250,000 a year, she reported. That includes losses in property taxes, wages, bank deposits and loans, rent, sales and profits.

It's not just downtown retail areas that are suffering: older malls are also getting cannibalized. A 2001 study by the Congress for the New Urbanism and PriceWaterhouseCoopers about greyfields found that 7 percent of regional malls were already greyfields and another 12 percent are "potentially moving towards greyfield status in the next five years." That would be 389 dead malls.

Since vacant or underutilized properties usually get reassessed and pay much lower property taxes, dead malls mean big tax revenue drops. For example, Northridge Mall in Brown Deer, Wisconsin went from an assessed value of $107 million in 1990 to a greyfield sale value of $3.5 million in 2001. That lead to a staggering drop in property taxes.

As new big-box retail stores are popping up everywhere, old retail stores and malls are vacating, transforming our landscapes and economies. We are being overrun by retail space. Look at www.deadmalls.com for more details.

Harm #6: Hidden costs in the form of public assistance to low-wage workers
When Wal-Mart and other poverty-wage retailers fail to provide their workers with a decent wage and full-time hours, many employees and their families qualify for safety-net help such as Medicaid, State Children's Health Insurance Program, Earned Income Tax Credits, Section 8 housing assistance, low income energy assistance, and free or discounted school lunches. These programs cost taxpayers money.

Indeed, a 2004 report by Congressional staffers tallied all of these hidden costs; they estimate that each Wal-Mart store with 200 employees costs federal taxpayers $420,750 a year in safety-net costs. Multiply that by the 3,500 stores Wal-Mart already has in the U.S.--and by the 300 more stores it plans to open every year and you get a hefty taxpayer tab. See the report, Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart.

To date, 19 states have disclosed the names of employers who hire the greatest number of workers that depend on taxpayer-funded healthcare programs. Good Jobs First has been keeping track of these disclosures as they materialize. Click here to see if your state is among those that have disclosed which companies rank among the top employers for letting taxpayers underwrite their workers' healthcare.

Harm #7: Bricks and mortar economic development subsidies
And there's another way that big-box retailers contribute to sprawl and harm taxpayers: subsidies. Many big-box retailers receive massive economic development subsidies to locate in new areas. In our 2004 report, Shopping for Subsidies: How Wal-Mart Uses Taxpayer Money to Finance Its Never-Ending Growth, we found that Wal-Mart has received more than $1 billion in subsidies from local and state governments. In essence, citizens across the country are paying Wal-Mart to build new stores. And subsidizing retail is not a very effective form of economic development. [For updated info on this topic, see our Wal-Mart Subsidy Watch website.]

Of all forms of economic development, big-box retail development ranks among the least effective. Retail rarely deserves to be subsidized because it packs such a lousy bang for the buck compared to manufacturing or almost any other activity. To measure the ripple effects of a new business, you look "upstream" to see how many supplier jobs the region would gain, and then you look "downstream' to see how many jobs would be created by the buying power of the people who work at the business. The upstream of a big-box store does not create many jobs for the local economy (think of all those retail goods made in China), and the downstream ripple effects are terrible because retail jobs are overwhelmingly part-time and poverty-wage, with no health care.

That means most retail workers have very small disposable incomes: after paying for bare necessities, they have little left with which to stimulate the local economy. Building new retail space just moves sales and lousy jobs around. It doesn't grow the economy. Many would argue that there is only one justifiable time to subsidize retail: to help revitalize a truly depressed inner-city neighborhood that lacks basic retail such as food, drugs and clothing. In all other situations, subsidizing retail is a waste of money.