The consequences of fighting off Wal-Mart

by Glenn Kendall

I have lived in Littleton since 1999. As a minor I lived in Wheaton, Illinois, a lovely residential suburban community of Chicago. The good citizens of Wheaton were successful at keeping their community a residential community. They banded together and, for the most part, kept out industry, big office buildings, interstate type highways and big box stores.

What were the consequences? Today Wheaton is a lovely residential community with high taxes, clogged streets and consequently does not have the highest property values in the area.

The residents of Wheaton travel their clogged streets to neighboring communities to spend their hard earned dollars and give their sales tax revenues to their neighboring communities.
When I bought my first house, I bought in Carol Stream to the north of Wheaton because I saved about $1,000 each year in property taxes. Naperville to the south has the high tech industry along the highway Wheaton kept out. Consequently property values are higher in Naperville than in Wheaton.

We can successfully band together and keep out non-residential development in Littleton like Lowes and Wal-Mart. However, we must be aware of the consequences.

We will have to pay higher property taxes.
Our children may not be able to afford to live in Littleton.
We will not necessarily have higher property values than our neighboring communities.
We will give our sales taxes to our neighbors.
Development will come but we may not benefit as much and crime and traffic will increase anyway.

I don’t like stoplights any more than you do. But I would rather have a stoplight on Santa Fe that reduced our taxes by $1.2 million dollars than a stoplight that was just a stoplight. Ask the city planning commission. Some day there will be another stoplight on Santa Fe.

Crime will go up if a Wal-Mart is built on Santa Fe. But crime will go up no matter what is built there. Vacant land always produces less crime than where people are living, working or shopping.

Traffic will increase no matter what is built on Santa Fe. But let’s get the benefits of the development and not push those benefits to our neighbors.

My fellow citizens, let’s think carefully about development and not categorically turn down development. How can we develop our area so that we can keep our tax dollars in Littleton? How can we develop so that we can still be a beautiful community and develop? How can we develop so that we can minimize the increase in crime that comes with development?

My suggestion is to let Wal-Mart build on Santa Fe but work to make it as beautiful and attractive as possible. If we don’t like the Santa Fe location for Wal-Mart, suggest other locations but within Littleton.

Glenn Kendall