Dan's Papers - August 10, 2007 - Fie On Thee, Oh Big Box CVS Store

As this is written, a battle is looming in Sag Harbor over the fate of what is shortly scheduled to be a new CVS Pharmacy across from the post office downtown.

It is a really strange battle. On the one side are the residents of Sag Harbor, thousands of them, who say that allowing the CVS to come in here will mark the death knoll for their sweet little community of mom and pop stores.

On the other side is the lone figure of Tom Ryan, the CEO and President of CVS, a chain store with perhaps a thousand branches, who already has all the approvals he needs to bring in his store. He says the battle is already over. And that he has won.

Then there is the proposed battle itself, which also is quite strange. The issue is whether or not a CVS downtown does indeed mark the beginning of the end. It would be the first chain store in Sag Harbor and you can make a good case against chain stores in Sag Harbor, except for the fact that what it is replacing is a 7-Eleven, which is also a chain store. Fifteen years ago, when THAT chain store opened here, the residents declared it to be the death knell. And it wasn't. All the mom and pop stores stayed right where they were -- and they thrived. That CVS is not the first chain store nor even the second, since the first one is leaving, is a hard truth not to ignore. What one is left with is that the 7-Eleven was smaller than the CVS. It was about 4,000 square feet. The CVS will be 12,000 square feet because it will not only replace the 7-Eleven, but also several other stores, which are now run by local people, in that building.

And all of that may be very well and good, but on the other hand, CVS stores around the country are not stores in front of which young people looking for trouble hang around, as they reportedly do in front of 7-Elevens.

Just how big is 12,000 square feet? Well, CVS pharmacies come in all sizes. The one in East Hampton is about 5,000 square feet. The one in Southampton, with its two story ceilings, is about 20,000 square feet. So it's, well, bigger than a breadbox, but smaller than a football field. You figure it out.

There are also two other arguments in favor of the CVS. One is that it will be tucked away, out of sight, at the back of a parking lot, behind a group of stores that sits by the sidewalk, facing Main Street. The other is that it will surely have lower prices than some of the mom and pop stores with which it will compete.

At the present time, local people trying to make ends meet do their serious shopping in the mall in Bridgehampton, where the big box stores -- 40,000 square feet of Kmart and 55,000 square feet of King Kullen -- make their home. They will do their incidental shopping on Main Street in Sag Harbor, though, and like everybody else, they sure do appreciate the Corner Bar, the Conca D'oro pizza place, the Sag Harbor Pharmacy, the Emporium Hardware Store and the flower shops and ice cream parlours and souvenir shops and gyms and everything else. They also like the owners and their friendly service.

Will fighting to keep out CVS change anything? In one sense, no and in another sense, yes. The "no" is because the future of downtown Sag Harbor is to be decided not by whether you have chain stores or not, but by the cost of real estate and the cost of the subsequent leases that the landlords are able to charge. Higher rental costs, for whatever reason, are going to drive the mom and pops away.

At the present time, the average value of a home in Sag Harbor, a little home, is rapidly approaching one million dollars. Three new condominium projects will offer up a total of about 150 units in the town and at the present time, it is clear that each one could probably be priced to sell at a similar one million dollars.

People who can afford million-dollar homes are very likely going to want to shop in high-end furniture, antique and clothing stores. And though they will go for that to the likes of East Hampton and Southampton from time to time, they are often going to want to do that in their hometown, even while they say that they very much appreciate the low priced stores that are there now. Just wait. A Ralph Lauren is on its way, coming soon to a Sag Harbor street corner near you. And Ralph Lauren is a local. Lives right down the street in East Hampton.

It has occurred to me that, perhaps, the people of Sag Harbor are picking the wrong fight. The fight should be against the food stores that sell jam for $90, the clothing stores that sell designer dresses for $20,000, the antique shops and furniture stores that sell foot stools from 14th c. Bulgaria for $6,000. And in that sense, the CVS could be the wooden cross that you hold out in front of you to keep the Draculas of the world at bay.

It has often been brought to my attention that Sag Harbor does not want to get itself "ruined" like East Hampton. But the ruination of East Hampton, from that perspective, did not come from the likes of Gaps and TJ Maxxes and Burger Kings and Radio Shacks. Indeed, East Hampton, fighting like hell over the years, has successfully managed to keep those things out. Instead, their ruination, if you can call it that, has come from the arrival of the most expensive stores in the world. If you can no longer buy a tin of aspirin on Main Street, or a pair of socks on Newtown Lane, it is not that way because of the likes of CVS.

Nevertheless, when all is said and done, you have to come down against the prospect of building a CVS in Sag Harbor. Besides the troubles that it will bring to the likes of the Sag Harbor Pharmacy - wait a minute, didn't the East Hampton Pharmacy, a mom and pop pharmacy, open on North Main Street there to great acclamation AFTER the arrival of CVS? -- the fight is really against sameness, plainness and the loss of all the differences between one town and another.

The war may be AGAINST CVS, but it really is a war FOR all the different and small towns in America, with Sag Harbor being one of the most charming in the lot.

It is worth the fight.

My daughter lives in San Francisco and for a while, she lived in a section of that town called North Beach, the home of practically every Italian restaurant and bakery in the city. People spoke Italian there. There may even have been a mafia there. But by George, all the artists and writers who moved into the apartments above those stores came out en masse to fight what had already been a done deal - the arrival of a Rite Aid drugstore - which, very shortly, would take over some old- fashioned clothing store on Columbus Avenue.

No Rite Aid, the people said. But Rite Aid had already paid the lease. Huge billboards then went up all over North Beach.

WRONG AID, they said. Just those two words. And Rite Aid tore up its lease, put its tail between its legs and slunk away. If they don't want it, they won't get it.

Sometimes, people get what they hope for, even while going about it all wrong, too late or with the wrong enemy.