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City Votes On Future

Tonight the Sturgeon Bay City Council could make two huge decisions for the future of its business community. On one hand are the local business owners of Third Avenue, on the other hand is retail behemoth Wal-Mart. Rarely do the two competing interests find each others fates so directly intertwined, but tonight, they appear on the same agenda.

Many Third Avenue business owners want the city to switch the downtown corridor to two-way traffic permanently, at an estimated cost of $35,000. Wal-Mart, meanwhile, is looking for city approval of their Planned Unit Development Application to build a supercenter to replace its existing store.

When they make their decision, the counsel should heed the advice of urban planners and demand that Wal-Mart build exactly as the city desires if the retail giant wants to take more local dollars down to corporate headquarters in Arkansas and out to Wall Street. Ed McMahon, an expert on city planning from the Urban Land Institute, visited our county a few years ago to show us how much a local community can demand of the big chains. Case studies show that Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Starbucks and the like, if they really want into your community, will come to wherever the community draws the line in the sand.

Unfortunately, only a handful of our county’s 150-or-so municipal officials showed up for either of McMahon’s presentations. Maybe some have at least viewed the tapes in the three years since. Maybe not. Perhaps we’ll just pave the way for more empty retail space, more empty parking lots, and less local aesthetic.

I’ve spent a lot of time driving around Sturgeon Bay over the last couple months, and found that it’s much more than my past impressions. The city is so much more, and so much better, than the deteriorating parking lots and facades of the empty storefronts on Egg Harbor Road. It’s much more than the ill-planned highway entrance from the south with its gaudy billboards and poorly managed sprawl.

But that is where the city has long routed most visitors, away from the historic downtown and leafy neighborhoods, and through those parts that could just as easily feel like Oshkosh or Ashwaubenon as Door County. That’s why so many think that the chain stores of Egg Harbor Road are Sturgeon Bay.

Until something changes, that perception will remain. Will the city draw the line, or will Wal-Mart?

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