Tim Ryan, tryan@wolfrivermedia.com
It wasn’t that long ago when big box stores such as Walmart and large retail chains looked poised to put an end to small businesses and once-thriving downtowns.
Now, the bigger stores are facing competition of their own from increasing Internet sales, while many consumers and brick-and-mortar investors seem to be heading back to the downtown and neighborhood stores.
“The big box store idea has reached its zenith. They’re moving to an online strategy,” said Jay Moynihan, community development educator with the Shawano County University of Wisconsin-Extension.
“The big box stores had a really hard impact on small businesses and downtowns,” he said. “The small businesses that survived have found a kind of niche.”
Moynihan said small businesses will also have to increasingly make use of the Internet and social media to continue to survive, but smaller and specialized would seem to be catch-words of the new retail paradigm.
“There seems to be a growing trend toward bringing the niche retail component back,” said Dennis Heling, chief economic development officer of Shawano County Economic Progress Inc.
“We’re seeing a shift away from the big box and large mall stores, which have been in competition with online commodity goods,” Heling said.
The city lost its Kmart outlet last year and JC Penney in the same strip mall at 128 Woodlawn Drive is due to close in April.
Meanwhile, two development projects recently approved by the city have chosen to set up shop in the downtown area.
An investors’ group has purchased the long-vacant property at 153 S. Main St. for retail development, and another developer, KTS Investments, LLC, of Green Bay, is remodeling and renovating the former Family Dollar property at 229 E. Green Bay St. Half of the building will be occupied by Tower Clock Eye Center, with the rest made available for lease.
Heling said there is a renewed attraction to “pedestrian-friendly, downtown streetscape” types of businesses.
The smaller businesses also play into a more community-oriented kind of marketplace, he said.
“We’re starting to see a growth in a sense of community,” he said, adding that the Shawano Farmers Market and the “buy local” movement play into that.
“Hand-crafted goods are also resurging,” he said.
Heling said there is more of a “community merchant” feel to the smaller stores, which provide niche goods and services that can’t be found at the major chains or online, along with more personal service and knowledge about what they’re selling.
“That may be the attraction and Shawano is very well suited to that because we have a very vibrant downtown,” Heling said.
The shifting retail trend also makes it unlikely that the vacant Kmart space will be replaced by another large retail chain.
“Larger spaces are looking for more specialized use,” Heling said. “The strategy is to find ways to get smaller.”
The current expectation is that the Kmart space will be split up to accommodate several smaller stores.
That might disappoint those who have advocated for years for a Target or a Fleet Farm in the city.
“People think it would be nice to have a Fleet Farm here,” Moynihan said. “But there’s a reason why those stores are in the cities they are and not here, and it has to do with demographics and population.”
The state of Shawano’s retail market became the topic of a kind of impromptu panel discussion earlier this month at a meeting of the Shawano Plan Commission.
The discussion was sparked by a question under old business on the agenda about the status of filling the Kmart space, and what the city can do to help make that happen.
City Administrator Brian Knapp told the commission there isn’t much the city can do.
“The owners of the property have many commercial properties around the country and are in the best position to market it,” Knapp said. “We would expect it’s in their best interests to try and market it. They have the horsepower way beyond what the city of Shawano has.”
Commission member Dave Passehl said he would like to see another big box store or large chain come into the city, though not necessarily at the former Kmart location.
“We need someone to take a chance on the community,” he said. “Once somebody takes that chance, maybe that spurs the County Road B corridor. We just need one to take that chance and see that Shawano can support it.”
Knapp said that would be a hard sell.
“You’d really have to do a serious pitch and you’d have to overcome some huge obstacles,” he said. “The way they do their siting, they know more about our community than we do before you ever talk to them.”
Knapp said the city can market itself, but the big boxes and major chains have often identified where they want to be long before the city knocks on their doors.
“When somebody does knock on the door, I think our obligation is to do whatever we can to continue their interest and find a place for them to be if they want to be here,” Knapp said.
“We have a lot to offer here and that’s what it boils down to,” he said.
Knapp said the developers that have recently brought their projects downtown have seen that.
“They see an opportunity here and they’re making a sizable investment,” he said.
Commission member Chad Kary said it didn’t seem like a coincidence that the Kmart space remains vacant, along with vacant retail space in the Fairview Plaza in the 700 and 800 block of East Green Bay Street, while there is renewed interest in the downtown.
“I think we may be seeing a movement, a recentralization,” he said. “That strip mall concept that sits three or four miles away from the downtown area, there’s a reason people aren’t going there. We may be seeing a kind of resurgence of that style, the smaller marketplace.”
Assistant City Administrator and Public Works Coordinator Eddie Sheppard said promoting the downtown could be the key to retail growth throughout Shawano.
“Making downtown Shawano great would be a big step in getting people to come here; not just business, but people, growing the community,” he said.
Commission member Jeanne Cronce said the community often doesn’t do enough to talk up what Shawano does have to offer.
“You hear people say, Shawano has a lot of cute little shops and stuff,” but we as a community, I don’t think we say that,” she said. “Really, there isn’t much that you can’t find in town.”
Cronce said it has become standard for people to say they have to go to Green Bay or Appleton for certain things, but that it isn’t true.
“You don’t have to, you choose to,” she said. “We have the same things and it comes down to, do you want to be greeted by a friendly local person or do you want to deal with somebody you don’t know that doesn’t have any interest at all in what they’re selling?”