Selling Out

Step back from it all, and there's plenty wrong. First, we have come to the point at which malls and retail projects occupy the status a new highway or public school once did -- a high enough public purpose to justify the government's use of its power of eminent domain to force the buyout of homes. Second, perfectly good neighborhoods -- no blight, no vacant lots -- are being uprooted to make way for big-box stores. Last, it is simply unfair for large, profitable corporations such as Costco, Wal-Mart and Home Depot to get public subsidies that are not made available to small businesses. If Bobby's Restaurant, a successful anchor at the heart of Maplewood's struggling downtown, asked for a public subsidy to expand and provide better parking, the city wouldn't go for it.

The public-subsidy game is reserved for developers of large retail projects -- or stadiums -- and erasing neighborhoods and ignoring small businesses is now considered an acceptable price for it. It's a developer's market, all right.