You’ve probably driven down a highway in suburbia and seen a warehouse club shut down or abandoned along the road. These “gray fields,” as architects call them, are ugly in appearance and they invite criminals. As a result, there has been a huge backlash and a movement is under way in San Francisco to outlaw big box retailers all together. The proposal is to ban any store bigger than 90,000 square feet. To give you some frame of reference, the largest supermarkets are about 50,000 square feet. A warehouse club will typically be 110,000 to 150,000 square feet in size. And the Super Targets and Super Wal-Marts are typically about $205,000 square feet. So, it would eliminate all of the “big box” stores. Clark thinks that we can come to some compromises on this. One way is to set up strict requirements that a retailer must follow when it leaves a space. Come up with rules about what the “big boxes” should be expected to pay in terms of impact fees and other “stranded costs.” Establish rules that deal with big boxes ahead of time. If we put rules in place, many of the things that make people hate these establishments will disappear. For example, in Florida, some big box retailers must abide by strict landscaping rules. And, in Hilton Head, South Carolina, the resort community has set up strict requirements about how a building will look. It will cost some time and money, but there is a bridge across this gap. We just need to do it right in the beginning and everyone can benefit.