Ashland a symbol that small towns, Wal-Mart can co-exist

Six years after Wal-Mart came to town, Ashland is still Ashland.

There's still a quaint downtown with railroad tracks running down the middle of the main street, and there's still a bustling business corridor just off Interstate 95.

Mom-and-pop stores and local restaurants still flank the tracks of the historic district, offering locals, college kids and passers-by ample opportunity to soak in the small-town charm.

But nearly a decade ago, the threat of a Wal-Mart moving in and disrupting that charm spurred local debate so heated that it caught national attention and became the subject of a PBS documentary about what happens when the world's largest retailer moves into a small town.

Last week in Orange County, officials capped their own two-year debate by listening to more than 100 people speak for and against Wal-Mart before voting to allow the retailer to build near a Civil War battlefield. That fight, too, caught national attention. While there's no word of a pending movie about Orange's Wal-Mart battle, the opposition could muster star talent among its ranks, with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and actor Robert Duvall on its side.

Now, officials and residents in Powhatan County are bracing for a fight of their own after the announcement several weeks ago that Wal-Mart wants to build there.

"A lot of us moved here to get away from the big boxes," said Debbie Markel, who owns Apothecarian Herbals in Powhatan and has led the early charge against the store. "Now it's following us out here."

Markel said she and other business owners had the usual fears of Wal-Mart, with competition they won't be able to match and fast-moving sprawl topping the list. They're meeting Sept. 8 to begin devising a plan to fight back.

"When they can buy shampoo a million bottles at a time, I can't touch that," she said.

Markel said she wasn't particularly happy, either, that county officials had been trying to keep negotiations quiet. She found out after filing a Freedom of Information Act request. "It didn't have to be that way," she said.

Wal-Mart officials did not return several phone calls for comment last week.

The people in Orange and Powhatan could look to Ashland for a peaceful solution.

Ashland solved its Wal-Mart dilemma by imposing restrictions on the store.

It's smaller and more secluded than typical Wal-Marts, with two of the three approaches on tree-lined streets. Its brick facade is a bit nicer than the standard cinder-block construction. And six years later, it has not become an anchor in the middle of sprawl; other than one short strip of shops, the Wal-Mart area is actually a partially hidden, quiet respite in a heavily traveled corridor.

In other words, if you don't know it's there, you're not likely to find it.

Most important to the area, since the store opened in 2003, Ashland has not become a ghost town.

"I thought it might put some people out of business, but it hasn't," said Cathy Waldrop, a co-owner of Cross Bros. Grocery Store on South Railroad Street. "Business has been slow, but so has the economy."

Across the street, Ian Kirkland has seen change in town since opening The Caboose, a shop for wine and fine food, in 1997.

"Some shops have come and gone, but I don't think that's Wal-Mart," he said. "The people in Ashland are extremely loyal when it comes to local businesses."

A few doors down, Jim Donlon is quick to say he wasn't part of the debate. "We didn't get here until 2003," he said inside his store, Train Town Toy & Hobby.

Wal-Mart or not, he was excited then -- and still excited now -- about moving from the Northeast to open his store in Ashland.

"It's one of the few places in the country where you can actually run a store across from the tracks," he said.

Like most of the business owners in the area, Donlon complimented Wal-Mart for its sense of community spirit.

"If you need something, they're there," he said. "I can't say that for every national retailer in this town."

Resting on a bench wrapped around a tree outside Cross Bros., Ray Martin finished off a cigarette and thought for a moment about Wal-Mart's impact on the town he has called home for 12 years.

"I can't tell a difference," said Martin, a 73-year-old retiree who moved to Ashland from Mechanicsville because that town had grown too large. "I don't shop at Wal-Mart because it's too far away."

At Ashland Ace Hardware, less than a mile from the Wal-Mart, Mike Traweek had high praise for Wal-Mart's community involvement.

"Wal-Mart has been a good neighbor," said Traweek, the 20-year-old son of the store's owner. His family bought the store in January 2000.

He and other employees said they hadn't seen much impact since Wal-Mart opened.

"Maybe if it was a Supercenter," he said. "But that store is smaller than most. They don't really specialize in what we do."

Ace employee Bob Holman, 60 and a lifelong area resident, added that "Ashland has always been two towns," referring to the national franchises that clog the area just off Exit 92B of I-95, offering travelers all manner of food, fuel and overnight accommodation. "There's the [U.S.] Route 1 corridor, and then there's the train town."

He said service would always be the thing that would keep small businesses going, even in the face of Wal-Mart's low prices.

He said he remembered that during the debate in Ashland, he heard a woman saying she was looking forward to Wal-Mart so she could get batteries for her hearing aid.

"Well, we sell batteries, too," Holman said, pointing to his own hearing aid. "We might be a dollar more, but we have them."

The difference, he said, was service. "We can give them one-on-one service," he said.

As for the fear that Wal-Mart would ruin town, Holman chuckled.

"I'm old enough, I remember [Interstate ] 95 going in," he said. "Everybody said it was going to kill every business on Route 1. Some did go away, but look now. From Petersburg to Washington, it's just nothing but businesses."

Contact Zachary Reid at (804) 775-8179 or .