Berlin, MD. Get Away From Strip Malls & Visit Wal-Mart By the Sea
Wal-Mart discount store #2560 sits along Ocean Gateway road in Berlin, Maryland. According to local officials, the store is “over-shopped.” If that’s true, it’s not from people in Berlin, because the community has less than 4,000 people living there, an increase from 1990, when the population was 2,616. The nearby community of Ocean City, Maryland has roughly 7,000 people—so the two communities combined couldn’t “overshop” any store. If they did, the competitors would have no business at all.
The entire county of Worcester in Maryland has just about enough people to support a superstore: 49,500. Worcester County pitches itself to tourists—not to big box shoppers. Located on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Worcester County is Maryland’s only seaside county, “known for Ocean City’s clean sandy beaches, outdoor recreation, steamed crabs and the famous wild pony herd on Assateague Island State Park and National Seashore.” Worcester County also claims to have the best birding in the state, “and 100 miles of marked bicycle trails on flat country roads.” And if no citizen opposition creates waves---Worcester County will soon be able to claim the 14th supercenter in Maryland.
But it turns out that Worcester County, which is now considering plans for a long-delayed Wal-Mart supercenter, is talking out of both sides of its mouth. In one tourist promotion, the tiny town of Berlin is described to visitors as “the exquisite, Victorian-era town of Berlin with its romantic bed and breakfasts. Or visit historic Snow Hill and Pocomoke City, with their 100-plus century-old homes and proximity to the beautiful Pocomoke River.
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, September 09 | 0 comments | Permalink
Charlotte, NC Wal-Mart Looking for $500,000 Subsidy
A Wal-Mart developer in Charlotte, North Carolina is looking for a handout. In fact, he’s looking for a half million dollar tax bailout in order to give Charlotte another Wal-Mart supercenter. There are currently “only” eight Wal-Mart stores in Charlotte, half of them are supercenters.
So another Wal-Mart for Charlotte is akin to bringing coals to Newcastle, or swallows to Capistrano. The idea of the public having to pay for the privilege of having another Wal-Mart is adding insult to injury. The Charlotte Business Journal reports this week that the developer, Faison and Associates, has asked city taxpayers to pony up $500,000 for a Wal-Mart supercenter in the abandoned Amity Gardens Shopping Center.
Faison says it doesn’t have enough money to pay for a road connecting the project to the abutting Coliseum Shopping Center. This boondoggle was first announced in 2006, when the city gave the land in question a rezoning. The zoning change allowed a mix of retail and other commercial uses for the property, but Faison is building only the 155,000-s.f.
Wal-Mart superstore. City officials seems to be happy to subsidize this wealthy developer and the world’s richest retailer, because the project represents a $25 million investment in the city. So what’s the big deal if taxpayers have to toss in $400,000 for road construction, and another $100,000 to clean up contamination on the site? There is no way that Wal-Mart could afford to chip in---their budget has been blown on image advertising and lobbying contributions.
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Posted by Al Norman on Thursday, September 04 | 0 comments | Permalink
Blacksburg, VA. State’s Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Anti-Wal-Mart Appeal
On May 30, 2007, Sprawl-Busters reported that Wal-Mart had become ensnared in a legal mess in the town of Blacksburg, Virginia. The town of Blacksburg adopted land use ordinance 1450, which limits the size of retail buildings in town to 80,000 s.f. Larger buildings require a special use permit issued by the town council. Wal-Mart clearly wants to ignore laws like ordinance 1450.
Residents told Sprawl-Busters last year that they had succeeded in getting their zoning law passed. “After a marathon 5-hour public hearing,” citizens wrote, “the Blacksburg Town Council passed, by a 7-0 vote, an ordinance that will require a special use permit for any retail over 80,000 square feet. A grassroots effort by Blacksburg United for Responsible Growth (BURG) brought in petitions with over 3,500 signatures supporting the ordinance. This was more than the total number of votes cast in the last, hotly contested, mayoral election. Speakers at the hearing in favor of the ordinance outnumbered those opposed by a ratio of 8 to 1. Almost all of the opposition to the ordinance came from individuals with a direct stake in a development on South Main Street that includes a Wal-Mart Supercenter. The ordinance gives us the breathing room we need to have the thorough study and public discussion of the best way of regulating big box development. We will be looking at ways to strengthen the protections of the new ordinance. In order to circumvent the new law and the will of the town’s residents, the developers of the South Main project sued the town. They asked the circuit court to retroactively award them vested rights to build their supercenter. We are elated at the unequivocal statement that the Town Council has made, but are still focused on winning the case and stopping this project that would be disastrous for the town.”
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, September 02 | 0 comments | Permalink
WAL-MART STILL WANTS TO COME TO QUINCY, WV
Wal-Mart still on tap for Quincy [Montgomery Herald (W.V.)]
Despite delays, Wal-Mart is still planning to build a new Supercenter store in eastern Kanawha County in Quincy, a Wal-Mart spokesperson said Thursday.
“Earlier this year we did re-evaluate our growth strategy across the country, which caused a delay in virtually all projects not under construction,” said Kelly Hobbs, a senior manager for Wal-Mart Public Affairs and Government Relations.
Hobbs says construction on the Quincy Supercenter is scheduled to start in early 2009. The store would be on U.S. 60, next to Riverside High School.
“We anticipate a grand opening sometime in early 2010,” she said.
Wal-Mart’s plans are to build a $3.5 million store that will employ 250 to 300 people.
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Posted by Tony Calero on Thursday, August 14 | 0 comments | Permalink
Quincy, WV. Wal-Mart’s Permit Has Expired, But They’re Coming Back
Now that Wal-Mart has grown fat again on all those U.S. government economic stimulus checks, the retailer is going back over its list of store postponements from the last year, and breathing new life into some of their low-hanging projects. One of the stores that Wal-Mart is checking twice is in Quincy, West Virginia---a state whose economy is so weak that Wal-Mart has been the largest private employer in the state for the past decade, with 13, 265 workers today. According to the Montgomery Register-Herald, Wal-Mart is taking its store plan for Quincy, which is in eastern Kanawha County, out of mothballs. “Earlier this year we did re-evaluate our growth strategy across the country, which caused a delay in virtually all projects not under construction,” a senior manager for Wal-Mart Public Affairs and Government Relations told the Register-Herald.
Now the project could start building in early 2009, and be open roughly a year later. The 20 acre site Wal-Mart wants is part of a larger 77 acre parcel, which unfortunately is located next to the town’s Riverside High School. Wal-Mart was supposed to begin construction in the summer of 2007---but the project has been on hold for more than a year. The owner of the property, who runs the Quincy Coal Co., says he began working with Wal-Mart in 2005. The superstore is slated to be 194,000 s.f. according to the newspaper. The director for Kanawha County Planning & Development says that Wal-Mart’s building permit from 2007 has expired. “They haven’t renewed the permit yet, but I wouldn’t anticipate any problems if, or when, they re-apply,” the county official said. Near this site is the Quincy Mall, which has in it a Kroger grocery store, a Rite Aid and a Dollar General Store---all of which will be hard hit if the supercenter ever opens. If Kroger has to close, the Quincy Mall is in deep trouble.
That could also affect the West Viriginia state police, since the cops have a substation located in the Quincy Mall. But if the Wal-Mart is ever built, the police can move into the store to be closer to the people they will be arresting in greater numbers.
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Posted by Al Norman on Thursday, August 14 | 0 comments | Permalink
WAL-MART SUES LOCAL BUSINESSES IN KILBUCK, PA
Wal-Mart files suit in Route 65 landslide [Pittsburgh Tribune Review (Pa.)]
Wal-Mart has filed a lawsuit against a developer and several companies stemming from a September 2006 landslide that forced the retailer to abandon plans for a Kilbuck store.
Wal-Mart filed a writ Friday in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, but has not yet filed a complaint.
“The goal is to seek reimbursement of funds Wal-Mart paid to stabilize the site and will continue to pay,” Daphne Moore, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said on Saturday. “(The defendants) are real estate and engineering professionals who said the site was appropriate for our commercial development.”
A developer was working on the site of the former Dixmont State Hospital when the slide dumped 300,000 cubic yards of debris onto Route 65, snarling traffic for two weeks and disrupting interstate train travel on adjacent tracks for days. Wal-Mart, which planned a superstore at the site, has abandoned plans to develop the property and is working to stabilize the site.
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Posted by Tony Calero on Monday, August 11 | 0 comments | Permalink
SUPERCENTER CONSTRUCTION PUT ON HOLD IN HILLTOWN, PA
Wal-Mart’s conversion put on hold [The Intelligencer (Pa.)]
If you’ve been holding your breath waiting for the Wal-Mart at the Hilltown Crossings to be converted into a supercenter, you might want to start breathing again.
Construction at the Route 309 shopping center won’t begin for another eight to 12 months, said Keith Morris, regional spokesman for the Bentonville, Ark.-based discount stores.
Last July, Hilltown officials gave preliminary approval to the expansion, pending some traffic and internal corrections.
Around the same time, however, Wal-Mart announced it was re-evaluating its expansion strategy, scaling back by more than 25 percent the number of superstores it would be opening this year, according to Associated Press reports.
About 80 of the more than 200 supercenters that had been scheduled to open in 2008 have been pushed until next year. The move dropped Wal-Mart’s capital expenditures by $1.5 billion.
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Posted by Tony Calero on Monday, August 11 | 0 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart Watch Weekly Update For Elected Officials
Check out this week’s issue of the Wal-Mart Watch Weekly Update for Elected Officials – a compilation of Wal-Mart news from across the country and beyond.
This week’s issue focuses again on Wal-Mart’s efforts to warn its managers across the country of a Democratic win in this November’s elections. The company has been holding mandatory meetings for its store managers and department supervisors (possibly in violation of state and federal election law), who are being warned that if Democrats win in November it could lead to potential store unionization. And speaking of unionization, read how Wal-Mart’s attempt to bust up unions in Canada has made it all the way to Canada’s Supreme Court, while on the other side of the globe all Wal-Mart stores in China will have labor contracts by September 2008.
In addition to the aforementioned stories, you’ll also find Bloomberg and the International Herald Tribune questioning whether a slowdown in Wal-mart sales could be a negative sign for the U.S. economy in the future. And on the environmental side of things, you’ll find the Christian Science Monitor among others discussing Wal-Mart’s opposition to carbon-offset guidelines, while the New York Times and Newsweek explain why concerns over keeping costs at low levels has lead Wal-Mart to drastically alter how its products are made and transported.
And finally, check out our “Stateside” and “Wal-Mart International” sections to find out what’s going on with Wal-Mart around the country and across the globe.
Wal-Mart Watch Weekly Update for Elected Officials
Posted by Corey Himrod on Monday, August 11 | 24 comments | Permalink
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