Resiliency of retail

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Updated: March 16, 2012 8:16AM

We were tempted to intellectual weepiness last year when the Borders bookstores in Orland Park, Matteson and Chicago’s Beverly community shut their doors for good.

The Internet, ebooks and some bad marketing decisions by Borders, such as being late to the digital revolution in publishing, combined to doom the company.

We lamented the end of a once-popular retail concept but recalled how Darwinian theory applies to the retail business as well — Borders killed off small neighborhood bookstores a generation earlier. Still, losing any bookstore can be an emotional, personal loss of culture for its patrons and its town.

But we failed to recognize the curative power and resilience of free enterprise. In Orland Park, we lost Food for the Soul and are getting Food for the Body, as Whole Foods takes over the former Borders store in Ravinia Plaza — bringing in tax revenue and at least 150 jobs by spring 2013.

Wall Street has never quite learned the lesson of accepting risks, but no one on Main Street is Too Big to Fail, and capitalism is meant only to offer a chance to succeed, not a guarantee of prosperity.

So now Whole Foods and its high-end, organic-focused operation will take its first crack at the Southland. We hope its Orland Park store takes advantage of its proximity to nearby farm communities for its sustainable farm-products initiative.

The arrival of Whole Foods next fall cements a trend in the retail mecca that is Orland Park, but unfortunately not one enjoyed by less-thriving areas of the Southland.

While the recession left Orland Park with plenty of vacant stores, there are few large stores that remain empty for long. When a big-box retailer closes in the village, another usually soon steps in to use that space.

As the economy rebounds slowly, the retail industry fills holes and finds markets for its goods. The Southland is a good place to do business, and the trend suggests that it’s only going to ripen as the economic health of the state and nation recovers. It’s the way we work as a country.