Vermont Towns Battle to Maintain a Sense of Place

Vermont's decades-long fight to protect its "signature greenness" from the threat of big-box and chain store developments has shifted to a much smaller box - the more than two dozen Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Family Dollar stores that have cropped up around the state.

According to Abby Goodnough, "Their [chain dollar stores] spread through Vermont, with its famously strict land-use laws, has caught chain-store opponents off guard.

"Shawn Cunningham, a resident here in Chester
who is fighting Dollar General's plan to open down the street from the
town common, said that since dollar stores tend to be much smaller than
big-box stores, they are often not barred by local zoning rules meant to
keep sprawl in check."

"Supporters of Dollar General's plan to open in Chester - a town in rural
southern Vermont, near the New Hampshire border - say that the store
would expand the tax base and keep residents from having to drive to
larger towns for whatever Chester's lone grocery store does not provide."

"But Mr. Cunningham and other opponents say that the Dollar General,
which has opened 15 stores in Vermont in recent years, including one in
Springfield, less than eight miles away, will be the beginning of the
end for what might best be described as Chester's Vermontiness. They
theorize that second-home owners will abandon the town rather than abide
a discount chain store, tourists in search of a bucolic escape will
avoid it and Lisai's Market, the beloved local grocery store, will be forced out of business."

Thanks to Sanford Lyles