BATTLE RAGES ON IN TINLEY PARK, IL

Wal-Mart - the retailer you love to hate [South Town Star (Ill.)]

“Save money. Live better.”

That’s the slogan for Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world, which grossed $374.5 billion in sales last year.

But all Alberta Overocker sees from her Tinley Park back yard is a massive box of concrete proposed to replace the sprawling green and goldish sod farm just outside her gate.

“I understand progress has to be made,” Overocker, 73, said as she looked toward 83 acres slated for the retail giant. “I just don’t think a Wal-Mart is the answer.”

From Overocker’s back yard, vehicles buzzing up and down 191st Street and Harlem look like Matchbox cars. A Target and several restaurants in the Brookside Marketplace shopping center across 191st Street are small but visible. Progress is happening. Now Wal-Mart wants to bring it even closer to Overocker’s door.

Chicago-based Aetna Development wants to transform the southwest corner of busy 191st Street and Harlem Avenue into a 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter and more than a dozen other stores and restaurants, to be called Prairie View Crossings. Tinley Park has yet to approve the controversial project that has prompted a group of residents in the Brookside Glen subdivision to hire an attorney. But meetings continue as Aetna and Wal-Mart representatives revise their 370,000-square-foot plans to make residents and Tinley Park officials happy.

Though the group of residents in this village of nearly 60,000 residents known for its mom-and-pop shops as much for its economic development have yet to file a lawsuit, they have hired an attorney. That means they could join the ranks of thousands of others who have battled Wal-Mart.

Lockport spent more than $100,000 and about 60 hours in court fighting a group of residents who balked at the store. Residents who shelled out thousands of dollars from their own pockets lost, and Wal-Mart opened late last year. Lockport Mayor Tim Murphy predicts the store will generate more than $800,000 a year in sales tax revenue.

“All the predictions of doom and gloom by the organized opposition against Wal-Mart - absolutely none of them came true,” Murphy said. “In fact, it’s the opposite.”

Mokena residents packed village hall meetings to fight Wal-Mart, which never got built. Chicago stood up to the big-box giant, too.

Should they take on the large corporate giant, what do Tinley Park residents have to look forward to?

“Some residents shouldn’t be surprised to hear that it’s going to be quite the battle,” said Mark Daniel, a Wheaton attorney who defended Lockport residents. “Thousands and thousands of dollars for each resident.”

A love-hate relationship

Wal-Mart first sprouted in 1962 when founder Sam Walton opened the company’s first discount store in Rogers, Ark. By the mid-1970s, the company had more than 7,500 employees in 125 stores and generated $340 million in sales revenue, according to Wal-Mart. Today, the company boasts more than 2 million workers worldwide and ended its most recent fiscal year with $374.5 billion in sales.

The retail giant has earned high marks on several lists for its diversity and placement of women in top positions. It is one of Fortune magazine’s most admired companies. In Tinley Park, there are 20 Wal-Mart stores within nearly the same amount of miles. And a store for New Lenox is slated for U.S. 30 and Williams Street.

“I like it cause it’s one-stop shopping,” customer Thomas Marbury, 45, of South Holland, said during a recent trip to a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Country Club Hills. “You don’t have to drive all over to get what you need.”

And that helps in a slumping economy where everything from a gallon of gas to a gallon of milk is bending the wallet.

Cheap prices and a wide selection of products are what attract Orland Park mom Carol Carmody, 40, to Wal-Mart in Orland Hills.

“The store meets your needs, and you just kind of become a regular shopper,” Carmody said after she and her two daughters packed water, bread, spaghetti sauce and a bouncy ball into their van.

Even Lockport Mayor Murphy enjoys his city’s shopping mecca.

“Wal-Mart has became the No. 1 store that everyone wants to be around,” Murphy said. “Once the lawsuit was settled, it brought to life all the land around it. Most retailers want to locate in the footprint of Wal-Mart. It’s an attraction to the community.”

But despite all this, people love to hate Wal-Mart.

“I tell people quality of life is worth more than a cheap pair of underwear,” said Al Norman, 61, who created sprawl-busters.com in 1997 to stop Wal-Mart from coming to a small town near you. “I remind people that you can’t buy small-town quality of life at any Wal-Mart.”

Norman tracks people who have fought and are fighting any big store, especially Wal-Mart, nationwide. So far, about 330 communities have stopped or delayed projects since June 2007, Norman said. And there are plenty more, Norman said as he rattled off a few: Chandler, Ariz., Overland Park, Kan., Rotterdam, N.Y.

As Tinley Park residents assess their chances in a David vs. Goliath fight, Norman said all they need is some cash and a good attorney. Daniel, the Wheaton attorney who represented Lockport residents and lost against Wal-Mart, said it’s an uphill fight going up against a billion-dollar corporation with a team of experienced attorneys.

“It’s difficult,” said Daniel, who is working on a Wal-Mart dispute in Rockford. “Certainly the residents have to hire the right professionals and attorneys with experience. And Wal-Mart generally has the top real estate firms and zoning firms in the area representing it. Residents have to match that.”

Ohio State University professor Elena Irwin found that Wal-Mart faces about 8,000 lawsuits at any time from employees employees, customers, neighbors and other plaintiffs, according to her 2006 study. She looked at what kind of impact Wal-Mart makes on the communities they are built in. Wal-Mart prices force its competitors to lower their costs, but the company also pushes out small businesses and drives traffic away from main streets, Irwin found.

Wal-Mart often is criticized for expensive health care plans, low wages and a poor environmental record.

In Illinois, the average full-time Wal-Mart worker earns $11.45 per hour, according to Wal-Mart’s Web site. That’s $23,816 a year - before taxes and benefits.

Wal-Mart did not respond to requests for comment.

A hometown fight

In Tinley Park, Aetna and Wal-Mart representatives have moved the big-box store toward the center of the 83-acre site - originally it was proposed for the southwest corner of the site - and added a detention pond near homes as a buffer. But residents say the store still is too close to their back yards and isn’t meant for land now zoned for a school, government or open space.

Two residents hired Hoffman Estates attorney Jason Tunquist, who specializes in land use law, this month to see what kind of chance they have at battling Wal-Mart. That group has grown, Tunquist said, though he wouldn’t say how many more residents have signed on for his services. For now, Tunquist said he is merely gathering information.

“(Wal-Mart) just goes against everything Tinley stands for,” said Marie Roman, 59, whose home in the Brookside Glen subdivision would abut the proposed detention pond. “We just don’t want it.”

Tinley Park residents have rallied against projects before, such as the building of Menards and Sam’s Club and the pending extension to 183rd Street, Mayor Ed Zabrocki said. Any legal action on the proposed Wal-Mart would be premature, he said, since project leaders are still meeting with village officials about possible changes.

“People like the status quo and sometimes when you enter something new into the status quo, it makes people uncomfortable,” Zabrocki said. “That’s what I think is happening here.”