<\/p>\n
Developers looking to build a Family Dollar in Mancos were met with protest signs at Wednesday\u2019s town board meeting.<\/p>\n
The town\u2019s moratorium on stores greater than 5,000 square feet expires in mid-March. The trustees could extend it if they choose.<\/p>\n
Family Dollar already has property under contract to purchase on the corner of Willow and Menefee streets facing U.S. Highway 160, said Greg Wall, a project manager with T&N Properties.<\/p>\n
The town can\u2019t accept an application for any new location until the moratorium is lifted.<\/p>\n
The presentation drew a crowd that filled Town Hall, and several residents spoke against a new location.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease do your best to stop this infiltration of junk. We don\u2019t need it,\u201d said Ginny Moore, a town resident.<\/p>\n
Resident Liz Bohm spoke about the experience other towns have had with stores like Family Dollar and how they\u2019ve hurt the local economy. For every one job that a corporate store creates, 1.4 local jobs are lost, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of data that shows negative impact,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The potential developers, Wall and Brad Lasater, a corporate real estate broker, spoke to town trustees about making a new building visually appealing.<\/p>\n
A new store would be 8,300 square feet. Only about 5,000 square feet would be visible to the public, and this equates to about half the size of a Walgreens, they said. The company would be willing to decorate the building with faux stone to help it blend into the neighborhood and use muted lighting on sign. A store would employ about nine to 11 people, and the sites are maintained and stocked well, Lasater said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re good neighbors actually,\u201d Lasater said.<\/p>\n
Alan Rolston said he was concerned about a store\u2019s economic impact on the town.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudies show that bigger retail stores, they don\u2019t expand the pie; they take the share of other existing businesses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Chip Tuthill said the business could open just outside of town to avoid town restrictions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are we, a one-mile strip? They can move outside of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When asked after the meeting why Family Dollar didn\u2019t move out of town, Wall reiterated his willingness to work with the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t try and be underhanded, we try to meet with the city and comply with their ordinances and codes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The moratorium was put in place for 180 days, and it stated that Mancos\u2019 land use code did not outline regulations or specify proper locations for large-scale retail stores.<\/p>\n
The moratorium stated its purpose was to give the town time to update the land-use codes.<\/p>\n
The trustees said at the meeting they would continue to work with the Planning and Zoning Committee to revise town codes concerning businesses such as Family Dollar. Trustees OK measure putting flat fee on pot<\/p>\n
If approved, ballot would take effect in 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dollar’s plan to open Mancos store faces headwind<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[4020,896,500],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-59981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-consumer-goods","tag-government","tag-retail"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59981"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=59981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}