In fact, they usually take away from both of those areas. Category-killers, like Menard's, do not generate new shoppers and new economic activity. Instead they take shoppers from local businesses. What's worse, the chain stores employ fewer people per dollar sold than local businesses. This leads to higher unemployment even as dollar-level economic activity is maintained.
Higher unemployment translates directly into higher tax burdens.
Case studies of both WalMart and Home Depot document that, once those firms decimate competition in an area, they raise the prices charged at their stores to levels higher than those present prior to their introduction. Big-box stores also vacate their property at an alarming rate. The costs of re-mediating that blight, like the costs associated with the Thompson factory, will eventually be born by the county's taxpayers. Those stores will need to be bulldozed, at public expense, before the land can once again be put to productive use. Meanwhile, they stand as an invitation to decay, crime, and anomie.