|
possible two new ordinances
in the making for Asbury Park, if you read the 2 articles in the
press.
Freehold
Township, which was founded in 1693, has a 4-year-old ordinance requiring
that new commercial businesses be designed with a historical look in
mind.
AND
Fed up with
fast-food trash, Oakland officials have decided to force restaurants and
convenience stores to help pay for cleaning up street litter.
TO FUND LITTER PICKUP
Calif. city tax targets fast-food restaurants
OAKLAND, Calif.:
Fed up with fast-food trash, Oakland officials have decided to force
restaurants and convenience stores to help pay for cleaning up street
litter.
Under a tax approved by the City Council, businesses will be assessed
between $230 and $3,815 annually. Most of the affected businesses would
only pay the minimum fee.
The city would use the money to hire small crews to pick up litter in
commercial areas around high schools and middle schools, where most of the
garbage is found.
The Associated Press
YE OLDE WAL-MART
Freehold Twp. stores get old-style facades
BY DENNIS P. CARMODY
ASSISTANT BUSINESS EDITOR
FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP — The
first thing shoppers at the new Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores on Route
537 might notice is what the stores look like.
Or rather, what they don't look like.
There's no red, white and blue exterior, sitting blunt and squarish on
the landscape just like the thousands of other Wal-Marts and Sam's Clubs
that dot the globe. Instead, there's a subdued red-brick facade, along
with a low-slung roofline punctuated by dormer windows and hanging over a
colonnaded walkway.
That's because Freehold Township, which was founded in 1693, has a
4-year-old ordinance requiring that new commercial businesses be designed
with a historical look in mind.
"Every Wal-Mart is a cookie cutter," said Thomas Antus, the Freehold
Township administrator. "We told them if you want to build this, this is
what you have to do."
Wal-Mart and its warehouse club chain Sam's Club are not the only
retailers to face the rule. Walgreen's and the Mount's Corner shopping
center at the corner of Route 537 and Wemrock Road have a similar Colonial
look to them.
Retailers looking to build stores in town need to have the township's
historic preservation commission review the proposed design. The
commission then makes a recommendation to the Planning Board, Antus said.
Wal-Mart, which spent 2 1/2 years developing and building its new
stores, initially resisted, Antus said, but in the end it agreed to the
architectural requirements.
"The Township Committee was not bending on this," he said.
Towns often compete with one another to attract businesses. Not only do
they offer employment and shopping opportunities to residents, but they
also pay property taxes without demanding much in the way of local
services, unlike housing projects, which usually result in crowds of new
schoolchildren to be educated.
In most suburban towns, commercial and industrial properties make up
about 9 percent to 12 percent of the property tax base, Antus said. In
Freehold Township, home of the Freehold Raceway Mall, it's 25 percent, he
said.
Rhoda Washington, spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., said the
company has made such architectural concessions to other towns in the past
and was willing to do the same here. "It's part of our overall strategy to
make sure we're part of the community," she said.
No opening date has been set for the stores, which are in a new
shopping center dubbed Freehold Marketplace. But Washington said she
expects the stores to open by the end of this month or early March.
The Wal-Mart is 150,000 square feet in size, while the Sam's Club is
153,000 square feet, bigger than the existing 104,000-square-foot store
near the Freehold Raceway Mall. Combined, the two stores will employ about
300 to 350 people, Washington said.
"The current (Sam's Club) is overshopped," she said.
It is not clear yet what business might take over the space Sam's Club
occupies now. Officials for the landlord, the Westmont Co., were
unavailable for comment.
A bigger store will be a welcome relief to June Powell, who moved to
the Morganville section of Marlboro from Baton Rouge, La., three months
ago. She was happy to learn the bigger Sam's Club and new Wal-Mart are
coming to town, because she was used to shopping in those stores when she
lived in the South.
"I'm not used to having to go to the drug store or paying high prices
at the grocery store," Powell said.
Shopping for her husband, her three sons, her dog and her cat, Kim
Umbro of Jackson knows the advantages of buying in bulk from warehouse
clubs. That's why she was putting a 32-pack of Diet Coke cans in her
shopping cart at Sam's Club here Wednesday.
"And I'm getting another one, too," she said. "Some people prefer the
supermarket. I'm not one of
them." | 