A city councilor's attempt to put a pause on new dollar stores in north Tulsa looks unlikely to succeed.
District 1 Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper wants a six-month ban on new discount stores. She said they're crowding out full-service grocery stores — and, therefore, healthier food — in her community.
"With business, it's location, location, location. So, if all the key locations are taken, common sense tells you that that's going to pose a problem if a grocery store wants to come in," Hall-Harper said.
Hall-Harper told fellow councilors Wednesday that council districts 1 and 3 have a combined 15 dollar stores between them.
Hall-Harper said the moratorium will give her enough time to find a permanent solution. That would likely be in the form of spacing requirements in the city zoning code, though planning officials told councilors that won't be an easy task.
The moratorium is on the council agenda after four months of work, but councilors Jeannie Cue, David Patrick, Karen Gilbert, Connie Dodson, Anna America, Phil Lakin and Ben Kimbro said they're against it.
Councilor Blake Ewing was not at Wednesday's committee meeting where the moratorium was discussed.
Councilor Ben Kimbro, who works for Tulsa-based construction firm Ross Group, said he pulled out of a project in another state when the city council there merely discussed a moratorium.
"There's not moratorium of any flavor that I would ever support," Kimbro said.
America said she could support incentives for grocery stores in north Tulsa but not a policy that hamstrings development throughout the city.
"We're a city that runs in sales tax, so I think anything that unnecessarily will curb development across the city in order to sort of solve a very, very specific, narrow problem — I think there are better ways to do that," America said.
Hall-Harper said she wants the moratorium just in north Tulsa, but city attorneys advised her it should be citywide.
Hall-Harper said she probably can't win the support of a majority of councilors.
"But I'm still going to push forward, and I'm still going to have it on the agenda so that they can look at the community and say, 'We're going to put profits over people,'" Hall-Harper said.
About a dozen people attended Wednesday's committee meeting in support of Hall-Harper's proposal.
