Chicago, IL. Residents Discuss Aborted Wal-Mart
Council should OK Wal-Mart in Chatham [Chicago Sun-Times]
Rosetta Prince gets giddy when she talks about shopping at Wal-Mart: “It’s just nice, and they have a variety of things. I love Wal-Mart,” Prince practically sings. “I would love to have one in this neighborhood.”
Prince, a 60-year-old nursing assistant, lives in the South Side middle-class enclave of Chatham. As she wheels a shopping cart from Lowe’s on West 83rd, she walks within yards of a grim, empty expanse of land on which a Wal-Mart Supercenter should be.
But Wal-Mart won’t be coming to Chatham. In a classic case of short-sighted politics getting in the way of people and progress, City Hall would rather turn up its nose at nearly 650 badly needed jobs, plus taxes, affordable merchandise and groceries.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, May 12 | 0 comments | Permalink
Copley, Ohio. Residents Organize to Block Wal-Mart Superstore Move
Residents in the Montrose-area of Fairlawn, Ohio has been stewing for weeks over what might happen to them across the road in Copley, Ohio. In late April Fairlawn residents met to talk over a rumored Wal-Mart superstore on vacant land on Rothrock Road.
The Mayor of Fairlawn, Bill Roth, suggested to homeowners who live in the Rosemont Ridge, Enclave, Rothrock Place and Copley Place subdivisions, that they might have to take action to turn their roads into cul-de-sacs—a sort of ‘circle the wagons’ approach to keep cars from cutting through their streets on the way to chinese imports.
The commercially zoned land is located just over the Fairlawn border in Copley Township. The superstore will cause the existing Wal-Mart discount store one mile away to go dark. That store is 110,000 s.f.---the size of some of Wal-Mart’s smaller superstore formats. The Mayor quoted the developer as saying in late April that he is planning a big box store, but would not identify which store it was. ‘’The scary part,” Mayor Roth was quoted as saying by the Akron Beacon Journal, “is we know that sooner or later (this land) is going to be developed, and since it’s outside Fairlawn we have no control over what goes on.’’
Copley Township Trustee Dale Panovich said the developer had only submitted an aerial photo to the township as of late April. ‘’It is not a site plan,’’ she said. ‘’That is all Copley Township has at this point.’’ Roth admitted that his preference is to have Wal-Mart expand its Fairlawn store at the Rosemont shopping center on West Market Street. The owner of the current Wal-Mart site has encouraged them to expand on site. “They are being very closemouthed otherwise,” he told the Akron Leader. ‘’They have the room if they want to do it,’’ Mayor Roth said. ‘’They acknowledge that they could expand and stay on the site. And they acknowledge there is great traffic (for commerce) on West Market Street.’’ The Sam’s Club at Rosemont Commons will stay where it is.
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, May 12 | 0 comments | Permalink
Chicago, IL. Wal-Mart Blown Out Of The Windy City
Wal-Mart got a bad case of the Chicago blues this past week, as a big wind of opposition blew the retailer out of the Windy City, and all the way back to its Arkansas compound. Wherever it has gone in urban areas, Wal-Mart has slammed into opposition from organized labor---something the company never experienced in the small towns of Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma during its birth years. In Chicago, the issue was not over zoning, but over wages.
The Chicago City Council passed a “living wage” ordinance, but on September 19, 2006, Mayor Richard Daley vetoed the legislation, which would have forced large corporations to pay a “living wage” to its workers. The City Council voted 31-to-18 to override his veto, coming just 3 votes shy of the necessary two-thirds needed to override. The ordinance would have set minimum pay and benefit levels for any major retailer with a store 90,000 s.f. or larger. Wal-Mart issued a press release immediately which said: “We will open our first store in the city on Chicago’s west side later this month. This store will show what a great asset Wal-Mart can be to the community, as an employer and corporate citizen, and as an affordable resource for thousands of Chicago’s working families.”
It never worked out that way. Wal-Mart had hoped to open 20 stores in city. Thus far they have opened one 142,000 s.f. discount store on the west side of the city---but only after a very contentious political debate. Two years earlier, in August of 2004, Wal-Mart pulled out of its effort to build a store on the south side of Chicago. The company cited its concern over the living wage bill as the issue. “It’s not about a living-wage issue,” a Wal-Mart spokesman said at the time. “It’s about an ordinance that singles out just some—not all—businesses in Chicago. We wanted to defer the discussion until we got a better sense of how this big-box thing was going. We’re just not comfortable committing considerable capital investment to a site when we don’t know if we’re going to be able to operate in Chicago. The developer, rather than extending our contract, decided to go ahead with the [zoning] vote. It’s not our call. The project is going ahead without us.”
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, May 12 | 0 comments | Permalink
Cudahy, WI. Wal-Mart & Soccer Team Fail to Score A Goal
Not even an entire soccer team could help Wal-Mart score a goal in Cudahy, Wisconsin. Cudahy is a small community with just over 18,000 people and a motto on the city’s border which reads, “Generations of Pride.” The vision for the city’s future is a revitalized downtown that will become the “heart of the South Shore.” The city is right in the middle of updating its Comprehensive Plan, and one of its most prominent goals is creating a “vital downtown.” The emphasis is on high quality of life, pedestrian-oriented development. That’s why the idea of a new Wal-Mart supercenter ran into rough going in Cudahy from the start. For one thing, the community doesn’t need another Wal-Mart. There are currently ten Wal-Mart’s within 20 miles of Cudahy, including a discount store 5 miles away in Milwaukee, and a supercenter 18 miles away in Sturtevant, Wisconsin. The idea of a supercenter surfaced in November of 2007, when Wal-Mart offered to build their store in an abandoned site called Iceport.
According to CudahyNow, many of the 100 people who came to that first information meeting were cool to the idea of the retailer using the Iceport parcel. “We do not need another outlet for cheap Chinese crap,” one of the evening’s speaker said. The developer, Continental Properties, outlined tentative plans for the “Cudahy Station,” a 26-acre parcel on E. Layton Ave. and the Iceport Way. The Cudahy Wal-Mart was presented as a 137,577 s.f. store. This is on the smaller end of Wal-Mart supercenters, but a company spokeswoman added, “We need to start looking at some of these smaller prototypes because that is what the customer wants. (The Cudahy store) would be a more flexible prototype, something that you have never seen before.”
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Posted by Al Norman on Thursday, May 08 | 0 comments | Permalink
Muskego panel delays action on Wal-Mart
Muskego panel delays action on Wal-Mart [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisc.)]
Plan commissioners delayed action on a site plan for a Wal-Mart Supercenter near Moorland Road and College Ave. after raising concerns about sound, the design and landscaping.
Wal-Mart is proposing to build a 156,400-square-foot retail building on a site off Moorland Road across the street from a future GE Healthcare distribution center.
The proposed Supercenter would operate 24 hours a day and bring 320 jobs to the area, said Deborah Tomczyk, an attorney representing Wal-Mart.
The building would feature a new design, said Richard Hayes, director of architecture for pb2 Architecture & Engineering of Chicago. The building’s three entrances would be enclosed in glass and stretch about 30 feet high. Canopies would cover sidewalks and public areas.
But plan commissioners expressed concerns that the building needed additional refinement. Commissioner Noah Fiedler said noise from the building could be a problem along the property’s south side.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, May 07 | 0 comments | Permalink
Muskego, WI. Residents Fight Back
Residents group fights Wal-Mart in Muskego [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (Wisc.)]
A community group has organized to fight a proposal for a Wal-Mart Supercenter on the northern end of the city in advance of a Plan Commission meeting tonight, which will discuss whether the proposal meets the zoning requirements and the character of the area off Moorland Road just south of College Ave.
At a presentation for the community last week at Muskego High School, Wal-Mart officials said Muskego should look at the benefits of a store in the city: Other businesses watch where Wal-Mart goes and often want to build in the shadow of the corporate giant. People would spend their money in Muskego rather than in Wal-Marts outside the community. The biggest employer in the state would bring jobs to the community, pay taxes, and contribute to the area philanthropically.
But many people at the meeting and afterward questioned the amount of traffic the store would create on nearby College Ave. and Moorland Road. Others were wary of the store because they thought it would require more police protection and contribute to the downfall of local businesses.
Resident John Walters said he wanted to see a comprehensive environmental plan from Wal-Mart and another traffic study of the area performed by an independent third party.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, May 06 | 0 comments | Permalink
Springfield, IL. Wal-Mart Meeting Draws Big Crowd
Dozens gather to hear latest Wal-Mart plan for west side [Springfield Journal-Register (Ill.)]
About 75 people showed up for a meeting Monday night on plans for a Wal-Mart supercenter on the west side of Springfield, even though no one is quite sure yet exactly where the retailer would like to build.
The informational meeting at the Knights of Columbus hall on Meadowbrook Road was organized by the Southwest Springfield Neighborhood Association, which led a more than three-year fight against Wal-Mart’s earlier effort to build a store on Wabash Avenue between Meadowbrook and Archer Elevator roads.
Wal-Mart dropped those plans in 2007. The new site is thought to be just south and west of the first location.
“We don’t want to give anyone the impression that is the specific location they identified to us,” association chairman Roger Kanerva told the group. “Generally, that’s the way they described it to us.”
Wal-Mart representatives recently met with Kanerva and association attorney John Myers to discuss plans for a west-side store. The city’s first supercenter opened in 2001 on North Dirksen Parkway, and a second supercenter is scheduled to open this summer at Sixth Street and Hazel Dell Road.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, May 06 | 0 comments | Permalink
St. Cloud, MN. Wal-Mart Plans on Hold
New Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club stores on hold [St. Cloud Times (Minn.)]
Plans to build a Wal-Mart in Waite Park appear to be on hold, and recent media reports indicate it could be part of a larger corporate plan to scale back expansions.
AdvertisementWaite Park City Administrator Shaunna Johnson said Friday that plans to build new Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores in the city have been put on hold.
Related road improvements in Waite Park, including improving 10th Avenue South, are also on hold until development plans are established, she said.
A Star Tribune report earlier this week indicated that Wal-Mart has “ditched plans” to open new stores in the St. Cloud area and other Minnesota cities as part of a plan to scale back growth.
Wal-Mart did not respond Friday to a St. Cloud Times request for an interview.
In December Wal-Mart told the Times of plans to build a new Supercenter and Sam’s Club in Waite Park, creating 200 new jobs. The company said it would eventually close its current St. Cloud stores.
Plans included a multibuilding development along Minnesota Highway 23 and 10th Avenue South, near Menards.
Times Business Editor Britt Johnsen contributed to this report.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, May 05 | 0 comments | Permalink
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