Day 122: The Anti-Chain Gang, Middlebury VT

Feeling excited for reunion weekend!
Listening to Di.Fm @ trance channel

It's 12:59 PM

I have to say! It's unbelievable that Middlebury fended off Staples, Walmart, and Starbucks, though McDonalds and Subway made it in. Strange, strange.



Guest author: Greg @ MiddleburyVT.Blogspot
"Staples Comes Unglued"
June 03, 2009

The end of plans to place a Staples store in Middlebury is yet another marker of how things have changed in Vermont.

Once upon a time maybe 30 years ago, any economic activity that wasn’t obviously polluting was welcomed by virtually all elements of Addison County.

Now, though, even community-oriented projects like Eastview can be delayed for years by a neighbor or two worried about the view out their windows. And woe be onto anyone who proposes to bring a nationally recognized brand such as Staples into town.

Much of the opposition to the Staples store proposed for The Centre, near the Hannaford supermarket, revolved around loyalty to Middlebury’s downtown stationery store. That store, like the independent bookstore next to it, is a much loved and endangered species. The organized opposition, calling itself Middlebury Area Residents for Sustainability (a curious acronym of MARS, which I guess makes them Martians), also voiced concerns about the visual appearance of the store, parking, traffic and a degradation of the ever-elusive community character.

The minisucule opposition to Eastview is just bizarre. But in the case of Staples, all the concerns voiced by the opponents made sense. We’re much the better place for the efforts of community watchdogs like these folks.

But I confess to watching the demise of the Staples plans with some misgivings. Little of the merchandise it would have sold would actually compete with any downtown stores. Moreoever, many of us will still be left driving to Williston or Rutland for major purchases such as computers, office furniture and other bigger-ticket items.

Yes, there are local alternatives to that long car trip and yes, you can order door-to-door delivery from a distant Staples. But the continuing absence of a local Staples-like store provides yet another excuse to expand our carbon footprint by racing off to another county for our many of our office supplies and equipment.

And the cynic in me can’t help but wonder if the Martians who opposed the local Staples -- and Starbucks before it -- really mean it when they say their opposition is to chain stores.

Will Olympia Sports, TJ Maxx, Hannaford and Shaw’s be next on their hit list??
Rite Aid, Aubuchon Hardware and Kinney Drugs? What about the Marbleworks Pharmacy, which has demonstrated dangerous chain-like tendencies by having two stores, one in Middlebury and another in Vergennes?

If you’d like to discuss this topic in person, you can find me having a mass-produced burger at McDonald’s.

* * *

We may be in a major recession, but you’d never know it from what gets left behind by affluent students who are anxious to blow this joint.

For those of us who grew up believing that one’s person’s trash is another’s treasure, the annual May departure of a couple thousand Middlebury College students is true cause for celebration.

The college of course organizes and sells off most of the treasure dumped by students at the end of the academic year. But for those able to escape the eagle eyes of campus security, the drop zones themselves are bonanzas. So, too, are the piles of barely used items that are left at various spots around town, on the curb outside student rental housing.

Over the past holiday weekend, several friends and I rescued silk pillows, rugs, a futon, hockey skates and a Schwinn cruising bike, courtesy of the newly departed students.

* * *

I got my own personal taste of the students’ dilemma last week, when I moved my home and home office to another location across town.

Moving is in theory a good excuse to divest oneself of unused worldly goods. But I’m one of those people who looks at a shirt I haven’t touched in three years and says, “Well, you never know, I might want to wear that someday.”

Which is part of the reason that I have so many jackets. They range in style from an enormous sheepskin coat and truly hideous matching hood, which I acquired at a used-clothing store in Rochester, to several ski parkas and light-weight windbreaker. Apparently I have a jacket for every five-degree shift in temperature, ranging from 20-below to 70-above.

Butpackrat tendencies do pay off eventually.

For example, it began to rain rather steadily last Sunday morning as the hour approach for the college’s graduation ceremonies. I was attending the first graduation ceremony since my brother’s commencement in 1976 (speaker: Anne Morrow Lindbergh). Among this week’s Midd grads unleashed upon the world was my delightful young friend Abel Fillion, whose parents were college classmates of mine.

Over my last four household relocations, Packrat Greg has held onto a pair of rain pants that I’d never worn. But they sure did come in handy during the graduation deluge.