Hometown Advantage Offers Compilation of Size Cap & Formula Business Ordinances

For the past several years, a growing number of local merchants, residents, and independent business alliances have influenced the manner in which their towns are developed by enacting or amending zoning laws to include retail size caps or formula business restrictions.

To help retailers interested in starting similar initiatives, New Rules' The Hometown Advantage has compiled a listing, with descriptions, of these efforts on its website, newrules.org. Hometown Advantage provides listings of communities that have enacted formula business restrictions and those that have enacted retail size caps, among other resources.

About formula business restrictions, the Hometown Advantage website explains, "Several communities have banned certain types of formula businesses. These laws do not prevent a chain store from coming in, but they do require that the incoming chain not look or operate like any other branch in the country. This has proved a significant deterrent to chains, which generally refuse to veer from their standardized, cookie-cutter approach."

Hometown Advantage lists each community that has enacted a restriction and a brief description, as well as a link to the actual ordinance, and/or details on how and when a restriction was passed.

The retail size cap webpage also lists towns, counties, and even countries that have enacted ordinances and also points out that at least one retailer (Wal-Mart) has tried to skirt a town's size cap ordinance by "building two or more adjacent stores." However, it notes, "Communities can avoid this by structuring the definitions within their ordinances to treat retailers occupying multiple buildings as a single retail use subject to the cap."

The size cap listing is divided into four categories: neighborhood, citywide, county, and international. Each listing has a brief description of the kind of size cap, and a user can click on a listing for a look at the size cap ordinance and/or a description of how and when the ordinance was enacted. --David Grogan

More information about Main Street efforts is also available via ABA's trade website, BookWeb.org.