Cities and towns across the country from Portland, Maine to San Francisco, California are looking for ways to maintain their unique character by limiting--or even banning--chain stores.
And some Portsmouth residents want their city to join those ranks.
Last month, members of Portsmouth's city council introduced an ordinance that would limit the size and signs of chain stores in the city's Historic District.
However, the proposal has tough opposition.
NHPR corespondent Brian Early reports.
Strip malls and chain stores seem to be everywhere.
Driving down any commercial strip, it's hard to see what makes one town any different from another.
So a couple of members of the Portsmouth City Council decided they didn't want their downtown to look like all the rest.
They proposed to limit how chain stores could be built downtown in their city.
The ordinance would define a chain store as any business identical to five others that offer the same services, regardless of ownership.
It would limit their size to 2,000 square feet and corporate logos would be banned outside the store.
City consultant Rick Taintor drafted the ordinance.
The whole point of this ordinance is not to prevent the chain store from coming into the Historic District, but to make sure that any chain stores or formula businesses that do come in are ascetically consistent and sensitive to the Historic character of the downtown (19 secs).
The City Council sent Tainter's ordinance for an evaluation by the Planning Board
But at the Board's hearing on Thursday, the proposal didn't fare well.
Residents and local business owners argued the ordinance would effectively shut out chain stores business.
And that, they said, would be bad for Portsmouth's economy.
Life long resident and attorney Paul McEachern, spoke in opposition.
Paul McEachern : It's a revisionist ordinance. It sort comes as preserving history and there no such thing, because the history of Portsmouth has been always an open city with lots of what we call formula business before were driven out in the mall era. Some of them have come back in to town and it has been the greatest thing that's happened to downtown. The Gap, for instance, it was a vote of confidence in the downtown (29 secs).
The Gap sits in what used to be occupied by another chain store, J.J. Newburies.
Another aspect of this attempt to limit chain stores is the protection of local businesses that have trouble competing against national and international chainstores.
Portsmouth Brewery owner Peter Egelston told the Planning Board this proposal isn’t the best solution to protect its local businesses
If we as a community are really serious about preserving our independent local businesses, well we just need to do a better job of supporting them than we do. We do need to buy local when we have a choice. But if I have to buy blue jeans there is no independent local business that makes blue jeans. It's okay to buy your jeans at the Gap. It's even better if don't have to drive to the mall to do it (29 secs).
In the end, the Planning Board voted to recommend to the City Council to nix the plan.
Although a majority of the Planning Board voted to kill the ordinance, it wasn’t unanimous.
Planning Board member Raymond Will.
There is a legitimate concern that business owner have that chain stores can destroy downtown because they can site outside the down with huge stores. I think there is an opportunity here to make it more competitive and to help local business stay local. No ordinance is going to be a short term solution. You see the results in a generation. You don't see them tomorrow.
The City Council meets Monday for a hearing of the ordinance.
For NHPR News, I'm Brian Early.
