COMMENTARY
Donn Esmonde: Hamburg, Walmart lead the way
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There was a grand opening Wednesday for the Walmart in Hamburg. It was a celebration not just of commerce, but design.
Tens of thousands of people will drive by it or come to it over the years. This is how it is with a building. It becomes part of the landscape, for better or—too often— for worse. Which is why what happened in Hamburg should happen all of the time, everywhere, with any public or commercial building.
The new Walmart on Southwestern Boulevard is not the glorified concrete-block bunker that the company usually builds. Its walls are red brick. Massive white pillars topped by peaked roofs frame its three entrances. It is not the Parthenon. But it is not a massive scar on the landscape, either.
That is not an accident.
Town officials in Hamburg years ago told Walmart that a nice-looking store was the cost of entry to the community. If it wanted to make money here, while bringing jobs and goods, it needed to build something that fit the neighborhood. The neighborhood includes the nearby Brierwood Country Club. Red brick. Pillars at the entrance. Peaked roof.
Town officials got Walmart to build a store that looked like a country club.
There is a lesson here for every community, for every person, for every politician: We do not have to settle for ugly. In return for commerce, we do not have to roll over and beg for anything that anyone is willing to shove down our throats. That goes not just for a Walmart, but for everything from strip malls to gas stations, from apartment houses to convenience stores.
Kathy Hochul, then on Hamburg’s town board, saw nice-looking Walmarts on family vacations to the Southwest and Hilton Head. She took pictures. She told board members that they could get Walmart to build a nice-looking store here, too.
“Everyone wants the tax base a business brings,” said Hochul, now the county clerk. “But whatever gets built, we are going to have to look at forever. The way [a building] looks sends a message about the character of a community.”
This is not just about Walmart and Hamburg. It is about the commerce that comes to every community. It is about the politicians we pay to watch our backs. What happened in Hamburg with a Walmart can, and should, happen with every public and commercial building.
We have a say in what our communities look like. We do not have to scar our neighborhoods with neon-infested strip malls and cinder-block boxes and soul-sapping structures that look like mutant Legos.
We do not have to spend our lifetimes surrounded by ugly.
Ugly buildings are a legacy of lazy legislators, bored town boards, unconcerned city councils. Businesses that want to build have to jump the bar of zoning laws, traffic studies, environmental impacts. All of that gives politicians a say in what gets built, and how it looks.
“You can make [the process] easy, or you can make it long and painful,” Hochul noted. “The point is not to scare business away, but to work out something that works for both sides.”
Check out the strip mall a few miles up Route 20 from the Walmart, at Mc- Kinley Parkway. There are brick buildings, and tasteful signs, and shrubs instead of endless asphalt. The Town Board worked it out with Benderson Development.
“It cost [Benderson] more to build it that way,” Hochul said. “But they won a [design] award, and our community looks better.”
It happened there. It should happen everywhere.
Ugly is avoidable. The Walmart that opened Wednesday is easy on the eyes. There is a story behind that—and a lesson to learn.
desmonde@buffnews.com
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