Chicago City Council proposes law making retail restrictive covenants illegal

The more I learn about how development works, the more sickened I become sometimes. One of the things that supermarkets, pharmacies (and movie theaters, although not mentioned in the article) do when they close smaller locations in favor of large ones is maintain control of the lease for the vacated space, preventing new stores from opening in the same retail category. They will hold these leases for many years until people's shopping habits have changed in favor of the new store locations.

Much of the time, this comes at the expense of neighborhood commercial districts, which are often anchored by grocery stores. I wrote about this in December 2002, with regard to Washington DC's H Street commercial district and the opening of Hechinger Mall in the mid-1980s:

When Hechinger Mall opened it snatched away from H Street three of the most important generators of pedestrian retail traffic on the corridor--the U.S. Post Office, the Safeway supermarket--two Safeways were closed on the 600 and 1300 blocks of H Street, in addition to other locations for the new much larger "regional" location, and People's Drug Store (now CVS). It also took a key African-American men's clothing store, Cavalier, which at that time was part of a regional chain.

CVS's relatively new stand-alone store at Bladensburg Road and H Street eliminated other stores that previously served the neighborhood. CVS's acquisition and consolidation of stores in the neighborhood over the past few years has replaced three stores--600 block, 1100 block (originally Standard Drug), and Hechinger Mall-- with the one store present today.

THESE CHANGES negatively affected the quality of the shopping experience in the H Street commercial district by forcing would-be pedestrian shoppers into their cars, to drive outside of their immediate neighborhood, in order to be able to satisfy their most basic shopping needs.

Yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times reports on a pathbreaking legislative initiative in the City of Chicago. In "Proposal to ease replacement store ban riles firms," the S-T says that "At a spirited committee meeting Thursday, it was clear that Aldermen Manny Flores (1st) and Marge Laurino (39th) have lined up enough votes to approve a watered-down ordinance banning "restrictive covenants" that prevent other grocers and drugstores from moving in when major chains move out."

This welcome legislative initiative needs to be considered by other other jurisdictions across the country, particularly for application in urban commercial districts, especially in center city neighborhoods.