[ScreamingFist]

Lots of these people shouldn't be complaining so much. The flip side is if your town is shrinking or stagnant. Then, you'd love a little sprawl to increase your tax base. Those are the towns that are the ones trying to attract developers and new businesses.

My little town (30 miles away) just recently had Starbucks and a Walgreens built, I like it as do all the locals, it means the town is growing. What we don't want is another Starbucks across the street and tearing down the old museum so that Eckerds can compete with business from Walgreens. Understand? It's called urban planning and it's out the window in most suburbs. Unregulated sprawl is a blight, I don't need 5 new drugstores within 1/2 block, at the expense of the historic 100 year old buildings and neither do you.

[sgtyork]

It's called urban planning

It sounds like the state planning who are the winners and who are the losers. You introduce unwarranted emotion by making the choice one between a "museum" or a drug store. Oh gosh, that's always the choice our precious museums!

Why should your local leaders decide that Walgreen's gets a store and Eckerds doesn't? Seems like a recipe for making local government officials accept money under the table and for driving away jobs.

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

While I agree with you that it is a shame to tear down a 100 year old building, unless you own it, you really have no say in the matter. And they have no say in your business dealings if you chose to sell property.

[cowtowney]

What we don't want is another Starbucks across the street and tearing down the old museum so that Eckerds can compete with business from Walgreens. Understand? It's called urban planning and it's out the window in most suburbs. Unregulated sprawl is a blight, I don't need 5 new drugstores within 1/2 block, at the expense of the historic 100 year old buildings and neither do you.

So...you want to be king? Get your own fiefdom. Who are you to say there should not be another drugstore? Keeping historic buildings is one thing; you deciding how many of any one retailer is another. The market will decide whether the town needs another drugstore, or apartment or Starbucks. If the people in your town don't want a certain retailer, the retailer will go away. People vote with their feet and pocketbooks. There are towns where there are only one drugstore, one department store, one restaurant. One example is the old company mining towns; the other is in socialist countries. Competition is frowned upon there, also.