Nantucket NIMBYS whine that chain retailer is ruining quaint downtown vibe: ‘Store homeowners are discouraged and upset’

They want this bunny would hop proper out of city.

After almost getting booted from downtown Nantucket final summer season as a result of a chain-store ban, in style teen and tween sleepwear/lifestyle retailer Roller Rabbit discovered a intelligent workaround and managed to take care of its standing as an island locale.

Now, some residents are hare-raising mad about it.

The playful PJ store — with 13 different brick-and-mortar areas throughout the nation, promoting some matching units that ring up at over $200 — not too long ago reopened for the season after rebranding as “The Roller Rabbit General Store,” with a two-year lease, new signage and in-store choices to suit below the native guidelines, adopted in 2006, that prohibit chain retailers.

“The downtown is the crown jewel of the island, and we are giving it away to off-island big money,” lamented Julie Biondi, who beforehand operated the realm’s The Lovely clothes retailer.

Roller Rabbit’s Centre Street retailer opened its doorways final summer season at 44 Centre St., after which it was shortly met with a July 7 metropolis enforcement order requiring it to “immediately cease all business activity,” reported the Nantucket Current. The order seemed to be the primary time the ban had been enforced.

The authentic bylaw acknowledged, partially: “The proliferation of formula businesses will have a negative impact on the island’s economy, historical relevance, and unique character and economic vitality. These uses are therefore prohibited in order to maintain a unique retail and dining experience. Formula businesses frustrate this goal by detracting from the overall historic island experience and threatening its tourist economy.”

In response, the store revamped away from providing solely RR-branded gadgets — that are a preppy hallmark of the shop’s different nationwide areas — to promoting different manufacturers that come from each native and nationwide retailers. 

“The store will be an entirely unique concept — not a Roller Rabbit mono-brand store, but a multi-brand retail concept with 50% or less of the product belonging to Roller Rabbit,” Hānnah Kinser-Sampedro, the model’s vp of visible merchandising and retailer design, wrote to Nantucket Building Commissioner Paul Murphy in a Jan. 22, 2026, e-mail obtained by the Current.

After reviewing the shop’s modifications, Murphy got here to the conclusion that the shop was inside its rights to function anew.

Local resident Biondi mentioned that the tide of rising retailers trying to arrange store in Nantucket — like Tuckernuck and Doen — are “essentially just billboards,” including that small companies are merely “going to get squeezed out” and changed by “chainlet stores.”

Nantucket must “overhaul the laws to say once you have 10 stores, you can’t renew your lease on this Island,” she proposed.

“It’s a huge issue, and I truly feel no one on-island really cares because they don’t shop downtown, but eventually it will affect everyone’s real estate values,” Biondi informed the Current. “I do know all the native store homeowners are discouraged and upset, however they’re so busy attempting to maintain their companies operating that all of it feels overwhelming.

“Is the horse already out of the barn?”

The bylaw doesn’t apply to grocery shops, in addition to grandfathered-in companies, together with Ralph Lauren and Lilly Pulitzer, that arrange operations earlier than it was adopted.