In late November, the Kansas City Council voted to approve new zoning rules to protect the Brookside business district from large-scale, suburban-style chain store development.

The ordinance restricts retail uses to 10,000 square feet, except for grocery stores, which may be as large as 25,000 square feet, prohibits drive-through restaurants, limits building heights, caps the number of parking spaces allowed, and sets design standards for the neighborhood.

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In December, the city of Coronado, Cal. adopted an ordinance restricting the proliferation of formula retail businesses. The ordinance notes that the unregulated addition of such businesses would frustrate the city’s goal of maintaining a unique and diverse retail base, and limit opportunities for small, local retailers.

Formula retail businesses are defined as those "required by contractual or other arrangement to maintain any of the following: standardized. . .

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Two state legislators are preparing a bill to modify Wisconsin’s tax increment financing (TIF) law that will likely limit the use of TIF for retail development projects.

"I am concerned about the inappropriate use of TIF districts to subsidize two kinds of development. The first is development that would have occurred anyway. The other is big box retail development," says Rep. Peter Bock (D-Milwaukee).

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Faced with a gap in the local retail base—no pharmacy or bookstore, for example—city officials almost invariably try to lure a national chain into the community. There often seems to be little alternative: how exactly does a town go about establishing a new independent business to fulfill an important function?

While there’s no obvious path and it may well prove more difficult than attracting a chain, officials of Orono, Maine recently demonstrated that it can be done.

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