BIG BOX LIVING Some sections of our nation have not yet experienced the departure from normal-sized stores and shopping centers to what has come to be called "big box" building for merchandising. Most of those we now have have been built on development property on the edge of cities and towns. Sites are cleared and some really strange constructions has been adopted which have provided new facilities...quickly and with as little expense as possible.
The term "box" is used both ways - as a complement for the quick, economical and serviceable construction and it is also used as a word of ridicule for much the same reasons, it seems. "Nothing made that fast can be any good" seems to have become an established maxim with many people who openly express personal opposition to this particular phase of construction.
Many are fashioned from materials laid flat on the surface at the site and, when formed, are "stood up" as soon as the joints can be moved - then, critics insist, a roof of a sort is "slapped on" top to secure the sides They liken the p
procedure to a child building a "house" using playing cards. Tremendous barn-like structures can be quickly provided for a wider and more varied merchandising efforts.
Wal Mart" is completing totally new distribution facility at Mt. Crawford - Harrisonburg; "Best Buy"" has had one in operation at Verona for several years; "Marshall's" in Bridgewater is well-established and there is a monster box in operation by "Target" at Stuarts Draft, Virginia.
In our region many towns seem to be engaged in a "boxing match". Eventually, someone has quipped, cities will be concentrations of people located on each end of strings of boxes which will connect one town to others in replacing rural scenery.
A.L.M. July 17, 2005 [c375wds]
