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[This Just In]

SOMERVILLE
If you build it, they will shun

BY NINA WILLDORF

Somerville mayor Dorothy Kelly Gay may be eager to roll out the red carpet for superstores in Somerville’s blighted Assembly Square, but local activists are pulling out their own big gun in the fight to ban the buildings: Al Norman.

This Saturday evening, June 23, the man 60 Minutes dubbed the “guru of the anti-Wal-Mart movement” will be leading a roundtable discussion sponsored by the three-year-old Mystic View Task Force. The MVTF, a group of around 70 neighborhood volunteers, opposes the proposed “big box” development, which members say will bring traffic and pollution without providing the significant tax base touted by the mayor. Since successfully fighting off a Wal-Mart in his hometown of Greenfield, Massachusetts, in 1993, Norman has embarked on a national crusade with his business, Sprawl-Busters, to work with local communities opposing the construction of big chain stores. As he writes in his book Slam Dunking Wal-Mart!: How You Can Stop Supermarket Sprawl in Your Hometown, sprawl developers are “waging a war of indoctrination.”

Assembly Square currently houses Home Depot, Circuit City, and Kmart. But plans have been under way to turn the Home Depot into one of its high-end siblings, Home Expo, and to build another, larger Home Depot, a Stop & Shop, and a branch of the Swedish home-furnishings store Ikea. Along with taking up 320,000 square feet of space, the development would add 620 below-ground and 768 above-ground parking spaces. Last November, Kelly Gay signed a memorandum of agreement with Taurus New England Investment Corporation to redevelop the area; the agreement planned for the retail stores, as well as community benefits such as a waterfront park, offices, restaurants, and a hotel (see “Boxed In,” News and Features, February 9).

According to Mystic View member Wig Zamore, the organization advocates the alternative of a “true mixed-use development,” with small retail stores, open space, housing, and offices — something like Mass Ave in Cambridge. “Besides traffic, [these big stores] don’t bring much else,” Zamore rails.

In fact, a rise in traffic is Mystic View activists’ major concern — and it’s a likely scenario given the plans for huge parking lots. “You can’t tell me you’re going to put in one of the biggest Ikeas and two Home Depots and tell me that there aren’t going to be traffic problems,” says Somerville resident Pagan Kennedy. “It’s just common sense. Even when I go down Highland Ave now, some days it’s so crowded it takes me 20 minutes to go three blocks.” She pauses, and then her tone is back on the rise: “It’s just going to ruin the community.”

Saturday evening’s program will begin with the screening of Micha X. Peled’s documentary Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town, about Ashland, Virginia’s yearlong losing fight against an incoming Wal-Mart. Following the film, Norman will moderate a roundtable discussion with both local and out-of-state activists about strategies for deterring large-chain-store development.

Norman’s ideal is the town of New Rochelle, New York, which recently warded off an approaching Ikea. “I don’t ever believe that Goliath can’t be knocked over,” he says. “These slingshot coalitions should keep firing away until the dust settles.”

Saturday’s event is from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the College Avenue United Methodist Church in Davis Square, Somerville. There is a suggested donation of $20.

Issue Date: June 21 - 28, 2001