GROUP BANDS TOGETHER TO FIGHT WAL-MART IN CORDOVA, TN

Group Mobilizes to Fight Cordova Wal-Mart [Memphis Daily News (Tenn.)]

It’s an old story, and it generally follows the same set of events: Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, pursues a piece of real estate that catches its interest. Opponents of the retail giant gather their forces, develop an organized campaign and attempt to stop the development of a new store in its tracks.

Sometimes Wal-Mart loses. Many times it doesn’t. But there is always another piece of land on which to build another store.

In Cordova, that oft-repeated turn of events is roughly at the midway point. Several nonprofit and community activist groups have banded together under one name and for the purpose of presenting a united front in fighting a planned 151,908-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter coming to Cordova.
Taking a stand

The new group calls itself Citizens for Sustainable Growth and is comprised of groups including the Grays Creek Association, Cordova Leadership Council and Parents and Friends of Macon Hall Elementary School. At the moment, the approval process for the sleek new Wal-Mart store, which will carry the retail chain’s new logo, is in a state of suspended animation.

And the new grassroots activist group is using that to its advantage.

The new group is hosting a meeting today at the Fisherville Community Center at 6 p.m. to strategize and fine-tune its game plan for volunteers who want to pitch in. A petition drive also is under way, an effort that includes both an Internet-based petition and a petition of the pen and paper variety.

A Wal-Mart spokesman did not return several calls this week to discuss plans for the new store, which the city-county Land Use Control Board approved by a vote of 8-1 last month. That vote overturned a recommended rejection by the city-county Office of Planning and Development of the big box retailer’s vision for the Cordova store, which is slated to be built at the northwest corner of Houston Levee and Macon roads.

Mary Baker, deputy director of OPD, said the necessary paperwork is in the process of being forwarded to the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, which still must approve the retailer’s plans. The Memphis City Council also has to OK the project before it can be built.

“It looks like we’re probably heading for the second commission meeting in September,” Baker said. “It took a while before the appeal letter came in, and then it’s taken us a while to get all the documents together that are required for the forwarding. And after that there’s an 18-day lead time, minimum, depending on when you get the application over there before it gets on the agenda.”

The retail giant’s average Supercenter is 185,000 square feet with an inventory of about 142,000 items, according to Wal-Mart corporate information.
Infrastructure needs

Not long after Wal-Mart’s plans were approved by the LUCB, opponents asked Memphis attorney Brian Stephens to work with them. He’s the one who this week began promoting the newly formed group that brought the separate strands of the grassroots efforts together.

“There’s certainly a lot of push across the entire U.S. for a way to create a more sustainable urban environment,” Stephens said. “And our main points of opposition here are that there’s just a real lack of infrastructure. I mean, Wal-Mart says they’re going to build a new five-lane road right in front of their building, but that doesn’t stop the fact that there are only two-lane roads coming in every direction to that spot. So there’s still bottlenecks everywhere.

“And it also means that if we continue to have urban sprawl go farther and farther out (into the county), that means less money for the rest of the city. So if you want new sewer systems in Midtown or new roads in South Memphis, the money doesn’t need to go out here in a rural county area to build new roads.”

Another concern is the potential that Wal-Mart might shutter a nearby Supercenter to accommodate the newer Cordova store. There are two Supercenters within a few miles of the proposed location: off U.S. 64 in Bartlett and off Germantown Parkway. Wal-Mart spokesman Dennis Alpert has reportedly assured several people involved in the discussions that such a closure would not happen.

“The plans for the building look great, but it’s going to potentially shut down one of the other Wal-Marts in the vicinity,” Stephens said. “We’ve already got two Supercenters nearby. And Wal-Mart has a history of when they open up a new Wal-Mart in an existing market, they shut down one of the other Wal-Marts. And we don’t want another empty big box retailer in Cordova or on Stage Road.”

Posted by Joel Nezianya on Friday, August 15, 2008