THOMASVILLE, Ala. — Residents in once-sleepy Thomasville have started complaining about traffic jams on Route 43, which runs through the town.
Much of the new traffic is coming from shoppers, squeezed by $4-a-gallon gas, who are staying closer to home instead of driving 100 miles each way to the nearest malls in Mobile or Montgomery.
“I just don’t drive as much,” said Herman Heaton, a 72-year-old retired lumber-mill worker, leaning against a Chevy Silverado pickup that costs him $80 to fill up. “We don’t go to Mobile as much as we used to for shopping.”
Many stores in rural towns — from small independent shops to local chains — are starting to enjoy a little life after years of seeing customers bypass them for distant malls. While it may not reverse the decades-long decline of small-town shopping, it could lead national mall developers and merchants to rethink where to build and challenge a basic tenet of retailing: Build, and shoppers will come from miles away.
“The whole retail logic has been to build big mass stores that drew from a huge distance,” said Robert Robicheaux, an economic-development specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Now, we need to reconsider that.”
Some small shops in Thomasville, population 5,500, report more customers as shoppers check out local options first instead of heading farther away.
“We are out in the middle of nowhere, but we are a unique market away from the metro areas,” said Thomasville Mayor Sheldon Day, a former Wal-Mart store manager who is trying to revitalize the town with additions such as a new civic center and wants to get chains like J.C. Penney and Target Corp. to open locations in town so that residents don’t go elsewhere.
Consumers, Day said, “are buying the basics they need. If you are looking to buy the basics, then you do most of your shopping at home.”
Thomasville is already seeing a 5 percent increase in sales-tax revenue so far for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.
Related
NEW YORK — Steve & Barry’s, once a growing force in low-priced fashion retailing, said Wednesday it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It also announced it was considering a plan to sell all or some of its assets to repay outstanding debt.
The Port Washington, N.Y.-based chain, which operates 276 locations in 39 states, said it and 63 of its affiliates filed the petition in the U.S. bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York.
Steve & Barry’s has stores in Colorado Springs, Littleton, Longmont, Pueblo and Westminster, and has said it plans to open a store in Lakewood.
Company officials blamed a cash crunch as a result of the tighter credit markets and general sluggish economic conditions. The Associated Press
