Low Price, Big Cost. I’m All Too Familiar With What the Walton Family Can Do to a Town

Walmart tells America they can “Save money, live better.”

The Walmart at 1869 Plaza Drive in Olean, NY opened more than twenty years ago, to the delight of my small town 23 miles away, just south of the NY-PA border.

Families from our town had, for as long as I can remember, gone shopping from time to time in Olean. Despite the fact that the tax rate on clothing in New York state sat at 7% and there’s zero tax on clothing in Pennsylvania, there were no clothing stores, let alone anything fashionable, in Port Allegany. Olean, on the other hand, had a shopping mall. It was tiny by any real standard, but it was a mall.

The Olean Center Mall had a “Cinemas 4,” boasting 4 movie screens. That was a lot in the 1970s and 80s. It was anchored by a Hills department store, a Sample department store, and if I recall correctly, an Ames. That was enough to keep it going along with a Denim Depot, a bookstore, a Piercing Pagoda, and the usual rotating variety of teen-centric fashion stores. I bought my prom dresses there, my back-to-school jeans, a host of earrings and trinkets and at the conclusion of each visit, an ice cream cone from the Baskin-Robbins 31 flavors.