BookPeople of Austin, Tex., is working with Liveable City, a local nonprofit community organization dedicated to improving Austin's "quality of life," to protest Borders Books & Music's plans to open a superstore on the same block as the 32-year-old independent. In addition to encouraging local residents to speak out at public forums, the store is printing bumper stickers and T-shirts with the slogan "Keep Austin Weird" to help rally people around the cause.
The new Borders is part of a large retail development that will also include an 88,000-square-foot Whole Foods grocery store and a seven-story office building. The city government has granted the project $2.1 million in various development incentives. The development has reportedly used $710,000 of the funds and is now seeking additional assistance. The same developer has another large development one block away that includes an OfficeMax store and a Starbucks.
Liveable City contends that the new Borders is likely to harm the local economy by taking away business from both BookPeople and Waterloo Records, an independent music store. Robin Rather, research director for Liveable City, explained, "Local merchants keep much more of their labor, profits and spending here instead of out of town. Shopping at local businesses instead of national chains with equivalent products and prices injects three times as much money back into Austin's economy."
A study conducted by the Austin economic analysis firm Civic Economics concurred, saying that BookPeople contributes $2.8 million annually to Austin, and Waterloo Records contributes $4.1 million each year. Civic Economics maintains that Borders is likely to account for just $800,000 of local contributions annually, and that most profits will go elsewhere.
In an open letter on the store's Web site (www.bookpeople.com), BookPeople CEO Steve Bercu called national chain stores "eyesores" and said that they are "inappropriate to this already congested area" and "are exactly the sort of stores that belong in suburban settings."
Sparing no invective, Bercu wrote, "Much like a virus replicates itself to destroy healthy cells, these chain stores spread and multiply, attempting to drive existing, local, independent businesses out of business—and they use our tax dollars as subsidies to give themselves a competitive chance."
He did add: "We're fine with competing, but we don't believe that the city should be tipping the scales in favor of our competitors by subsidizing the national chains."
Commenting on the fray, Rich Oppel, editor of the Austin-American Statesman, wrote in an editorial that the city should not subsidize chains but "neither should the city shield locally owned businesses from chain competition. The real predator is not Borders, but the city."
