Amid complaints of filthy, unsafe stores in the city pushing shoppers to cleaner suburban locations, the City Council agreed Wednesday to rein in Chicago’s 149 dollar stores with what the companies call a “moratorium.”
By a 42-7 vote, alderpersons approved an ordinance championed by Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th) that prevents new and expanding “small-box retailers” from locating “within one mile of an existing store owned or managed by the same controlling person.”
The ordinance defines dollar stores as retail establishments that offer or advertise the majority of items at under $5 each and are 4,000 to 17,500 square feet.
Exempt are stores that have prescription pharmacies, sell gasoline or diesel fuel, “primarily sell specialty food items” or dedicate more than 10% of their floor space to selling “fresh meats, poultry, seafood, dairy products, eggs, fruit or vegetables.”
An angry O’Shea ridiculed Dollar Tree, Dollar General and Family Dollar for last-ditch attempts to persuade his colleagues to delay Wednesday’s vote after spending the last five months stonewalling negotiations.
O’Shea said he’s made “seven concessions” while dollar store owners made “zero.”
“Dollar stores told me one thing on the phone, and then a week later said, ‘Can’t afford that,’” O’Shea said.
“They’ve had every opportunity to come to the table. Not like this morning [when they said], ‘Hold it another month.’ Oh, and get this one: `We’re gonna sue.’ ... That’s floating around. `We’re gonna sue.’ Bring it on,” he added. “They have been dishonest brokers. … You folks know me. I’m pragmatic. I’m willing to work with anybody. I don’t like getting bulls----ed. I don’t like getting my chain yanked.”
O’Shea represents a Far Southwest Side ward with four dollar stores and a fifth opening soon.
He cited the 3,300 code violations the Chicago stores have received from 2018 through 2023, such as selling baby formula six months past its expiration date and some medicine expired a full year.
He described overflowing dumpsters and litter-strewn parking lots, broken fences and light fixtures and tipped-over shopping carts.
“Yet, it’s funny. When I drive just five or 10 minutes outside my community in a predominantly white suburb, I don’t see that. I see clean, well-maintained stores and parking lots,” O’Shea said.
“ Why does this Fortune 200 company think that it’s OK to maintain stores in suburban white communities, yet ignore stores in your community?”
Ald. Derrick Curtis (18th) said he “loves Dollar Tree” and buys “a lot of arts and crafts” there for after-school programs.
“But I don’t do it in the city. I have to go to the suburbs … because they’re not the same,” he said.
Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th) told the harrowing story of her two daughters — ages 21 and 31 — who were working at Dollar Tree in the 17th Ward when the store was robbed.
The older daughter has a concealed-carry permit and had been asked to bring the gun “to the store for safety” that very day, Taylor said. But that daughter was in the back as the other daughter was being robbed at the register — “robbed at gunpoint,” Taylor said.
“It’s funny now that one of my colleagues has come up with an ordinance to hold them accountable, and now, we’re being asked to wait. What would you say to me if my daughter had gotten killed? Y’all ain’t got enough money to pay me for how I would have been burning down this city over my kid. … How much longer do we have to wait for the things that we deserve in our community?” she asked.
The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, the Illinois Retail Merchants Association and the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, who had lobbied O’Shea to shrink the proposed bubble around stores to 1,000 feet, accused the Council of writing “another chapter in its ongoing narrative of hostility to retailers, passing a misguided proposal that will address a problem in one ward while depriving residents of many other wards convenient access to affordable necessities. ”
In a statement, the company that owns Dollar Tree and Family Dollar said that “as passed, this ordinance — essentially a moratorium — won’t solve the issue it claims to be about: addressing the food desert challenge in Chicago. In fact, as acknowledged by a number of government officials in our many conversations, it will bring more harm than help to the very communities it claims to support by limiting the flexibility to improve stores and provide new offerings to people in these communities. With the City Council’s vote, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree as well as other retailers will essentially be prohibited from opening new or relocated stores in Chicago.”
Also at Wednesday’s meeting, the Council:
• Added millions to the mountain of settlements tied to allegations of police wrongdoing. The largest — $3.25 million — goes to the family of Martina Standley, a bipolar woman who died after being hit by a Chicago police officer driving a 2-ton police SUV.
• Confirmed Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointments of Water Management Commissioner Randy Conner and Housing Commissioner Lissette Castaneda.
• Agreed to exempt shoe repair businesses and their customers from Chicago’s 7-cent tax on paper and plastic bags.
• Mandated the Chicago Police Department conduct another staffing analysis to determine how to best deploy its dwindling ranks after similar studies were effectively scrapped. Chief sponsor Matt Martin (47th) has cited the need to respond more quickly to 911 calls, close the gap between response times in different police districts and comply with a federal consent decree that mandates such analyses regularly. Similar studies, commissioned in 2016 and 2019, were not completed, and preliminary results were not made public. Martin has vowed this time will be different because Chicagoans “deserve more transparency on how decisions are made.”
• Paved the way for a vacant, neglected Humboldt Park landmark once called “Chicago’s most beautiful bank” to be renovated and reborn. A $13 million tax increment financing subsidy intended to allow renovation of the former Pioneer Bank Building at 4000 W. North Ave. already had been approved, but the Council voted to change that grant to a “forgivable loan.” The grant had effectively stalled the $24.1 million development because it carried what city planner William Graham called a “substantial tax burden.” Making it a forgivable loan at 1% interest removes that financial burden, allowing the project to move forward. Under the 10-year agreement, $1.62 million in principal and interest would be forgiven annually for the duration of the agreement, until the loan is fully forgiven.
• Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th) introduced an ordinance that would require “manufacturers, retailers, importers and distributors of electric scooters and electric bicycles to comply with safety standards established by Underwriters Laboratories. Silverstein noted that over a nearly two-year period ending on Nov. 28 2022, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has “tracked at least 208” fires or overheating incidents and at least 19 deaths involving so-called “micro-mobility devices.”
