Looking for a Way to Boost the Economy? Shop Locally, Not at Wal-Mart.

This article from the Oshkosh Northwestern in Wisconsin is one of a series of recent articles explaining that the best way to address a sagging economy is not by shopping at Wal-Mart, as the company might want you to believe, but by supporting locally-owned businesses that reinvest in the community.

Commentary: Supporting community commerce more important than lowest price [Oshkosh Northwestern (Wisc.)]

In the sometimes embarrassing world of sales, one of the first things I was taught was “Friends buy from friends.” It made sense after all, the first thing that someone should try to develop in a sales relationship was just that, a relationship. And the closer that relationship, the more likely it was that a sale was eminent. If you could be trusted for your advice and product or service, you were worth someone’s hard-earned money.

While this principle seems to make sense, it is surprising to me how we, as a society, have gotten away from that idea of being loyal to the business owners we call our friends. More and more, price plays such a much bigger role in buying decisions that some of the largest companies in the world bank on you being less loyal to the local business and more loyal to which one can satisfy your needs for less.

Case in point is Wal-Mart with their philosophy that sold so many over the holiday season. “Save money, live better.” Did they say, “Shop locally, save jobs?” No. Did they say, “Better service means better satisfaction?” No. Did they say, “Buy from those you know?” No. They said, “Save money, live better.” Because after all, if we can save money on what we want, we will have a better life and it doesn’t matter what it means for anone else. Is this what we as a society have gotten to? It’s all about me?

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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, February 04 | 4 comments | Permalink

Madison, OH. Township Asks Wal-Mart to Contribute for Infrastructure

Trustees ask Wal-Mart to chip in for waterlines [News-Herald (Calif.)]

Madison Township trustees want Wal-Mart to help pay for a waterline project that would cost affected Meadow Wood Drive residents about $15,000 each.

Trustees Jeff Quirk, Pete Wayman and Bill Brotzman agreed unanimously to ask the retail chain to help the Meadow Wood Homeowners Association.

The association said Wal-Mart started a sewer line that wound up with homeowners switching from well water to county water.

“This change, we believe, led to one of the wells on Meadow Wood Drive testing positive for E. coli,” association President Doug Stauffer said in a written statement to trustees.

“It was after the well tested positive for E. coli that we felt forced to seek a way to protect the health of our families, as well as the value of our homes. We believe that Wal-Mart didn’t really recognize the impact to watershed that development of the Madison site caused and hasn’t adequately protected its neighbors.”

The association said it would like to see trustees “requiring Wal-Mart to in some way offset the damages.”

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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, January 31 | 0 comments | Permalink

Saukville, WI. Wal-Mart Looks for Special Treatment

24-hour restriction makes Wal-Mart wary [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

A Saukville ordinance that would prohibit a proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter from operating 24 hours a day has become an “obstacle” to the company’s plans, a Wal-Mart official says.

“We are still very, very interested in Saukville,” said Lisa Nelson, Wal-Mart’s senior manager for public affairs for Wisconsin.

“But we would really like to have a 24-hour operation.”

Last September, the Saukville Village Board passed an ordinance stating that a store with more than 100,000 square feet must limit its hours of operation to between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.

The Plan Commission could grant the Supercenter a waiver.

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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, January 28 | 0 comments | Permalink

Bellevue, WI. Open A Supercenter, Close A Discount Store.

The small community of Bellevue, Wisconsin has to make a big decision. This village of roughly 14,600 people just south of Green Bay, has had a Wal-Mart supercenter thrown in its lap. The village, whose motto is “A Great Place To Grow,” has to decide if growth means putting a Wal-Mart supercenter in its new business park. Elsewhere in Wisconsin, in places like Spooner and Stoughton, Wal-Mart stores have either been killed or put on hold this year. But now its Bellevue’s turn to enter the Wal-Mart Wars.

This battle has nothing to do with market need, because there are 3 Wal-Mart’s within 10 miles of Bellevue. There is a discount store and a superstore in Green Bay, and a second supercenter in De Pere. But according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette, the village board in Bellevue plans to make a decision within the next few weeks up or down on the Wal-Mart project. No independent traffic studies, no economic impact studies. The village will hold a public hearing on February 13th. This week, local residents jammed into the Village board room to express their concern and dismay over the proposed store. Every single resident who testified on the plan, opposed it. The litany of concerns was typical. They ranged from lost property values, to low wage jobs, to impact on the rest of the business community. “I’m proud of the community that I live in,” the Press-Gazette quoted one resident as saying. “I’m proud of utilizing our businesses. I’ll be very disappointed if this goes through.”

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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, January 28 | 0 comments | Permalink

Portsmouth, MI. Wal-Mart Makes Excuses for Delays

Wal-Mart cites lawsuit as reason for lull on M-15 supercenter project [Bay City Times (Mich.)]

Wal-Mart officials this week offered their first public comments in several months on the status of the proposed supercenter slated for development along M-15 in Portsmouth Township.

Township officials have said it’s their understanding that the 184,000-square-foot megastore is on its way, but it’s once again tied up in litigation. The anti-Wal-Mart group Friends of Portsmouth Township, which has opposed the project for four years, has filed a new appeal against the development in the Michigan Supreme Court.

Nick Infante, a Wal-Mart spokesman in Michigan, explained the retailer’s reasons for staying quiet while many in the community continue to wonder about the project’s status.

‘’I haven’t been able to comment on the store because it’s still in litigation,’’ he said. ‘’There was an appeal to the Supreme Court that was filed by the opposition, so at this point we can’t move forward on anything until the litigation is complete. And I don’t know when that’s going to be.’’

Dr. Mark Stewart, who lives next to the proposed site and has led the anti-Wal-Mart coalition, offered his reasons on Wednesday for continuing to challenge the project in court.

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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, January 25 | 0 comments | Permalink

Bellvue, WI. Wal-Mart Meets Fierce Local Opposition

Wal-Mart proposal strongly opposed in Bellevue [Green Bay Press Gazette (Wisc.)]

The Village Board will have about three weeks to mull over numerous residents’ concerns about the proposed Wal-Mart for the business park at Wisconsin 172 and Brown County GV.

A public hearing on the proposal is scheduled for Feb. 13. That’s when the board could decide Wal-Mart’s fate in the village.

A nearly packed room of residents crowded Wednesday night’s Village Board meeting for a town hall-style discussion on the proposal. All residents who spoke on the proposal opposed it.

Residents expressed concerns such as the impact of a Wal-Mart in the area would have on property values and what kinds of jobs would be brought in by the chain.

Rachel Cloud said adding a corporate big box like Wal-Mart won’t keep the money in the community.

“I’m proud of the community that I live in,” she said. “I’m proud of utilizing our businesses. I’ll be very disappointed if this goes through.”

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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, January 25 | 0 comments | Permalink

Ohio State Senator Asks Wal-Mart Not to Come to Canfield

State lawmaker says Wal-Mart should not come to Canfield [Youngstown Vindicator (Ohio)]

Wal-Mart should respect the wishes of the community and not try to build a new supercenter here, a state senator says.

State Sen. John Boccieri of New Middletown, D-33rd, said Wal-Mart should respect the pending vote of Canfield Township trustees and follow the will of the people who do not want the company to move its 187,000-square-foot supercenter in the area.

“Township and city residents have made clear their opposition to Wal-Mart moving its supercenter into the community, and Wal-Mart should respect that,” Boccieri said today.

“If the township trustees vote to deny the zoning change, then Wal-Mart should respect the decision of the community and not throw its weight around,” he added.

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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, January 22 | 0 comments | Permalink

Minneapolis, MN Fed Bank Finds No Link Between Wal-Mart & Good Economic Impacts

When two employees at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis released a study in the January issue of the fedgazette called “The Wal-Mart Effect,” its findings---if you can call them that---created a predictable effect in the media. “Wow,’ whistled a columnist for the Elmira, NY Star-Gazette. “Someone actually spoke the unspeakable—the late Sam Walton’s company isn’t that bad after all—and backed the statements up with solid facts.” But the“solid facts” in this study were built on some very fragile assumptions. The authors repeatedly footnote their narrative to caution readers about interpreting the results. They use the euphemism “host of caveats” to temper their findings. The Bank examined 40 small counties across six states in the bank’s Ninth District (MI, ND,SD,WI, MT, MN) that had a Wal-Mart come to town between 1986 and 2003, and compared them with 49 similarly sized counties in the same geographic area that didn’t have a Wal-Mart. Researchers chose counties as the economic unit to study, because “various socioeconomic effects from Wal-Mart likely spill over a much larger territory than the home municipality. Though county borders are imperfect at best, they offer a broader and more realistic territory to gauge change.” In fact, county borders are a blunt instrument, and not very useful in searching for the impact of one giant store on one small town---which is where most of the damage occurs. In a county—even a small one—the impact is dispersed across many players, and the loss of a couple of key local retailers will not be revealed. In addition, market trade areas and counties have little or nothing to do with one another. A huge store on the edge of one county, may draw shoppers away from another county, but it will never show up in a study from the Fed Bank. The former is economic, the latter is political. The authors further weaken their case by noting that their selection of 49 non-Wal-Mart Counties was “not a truly scientific control group and, as such, cannot be said to represent county outcomes where Wal-Mart is absent.” The Fed Bank concluded that Wal-Mart can be helpful or harmful, “though which it is depends on the circumstances.” If a community has a rapidly growing population base, it can more easily absorb a giant supercenter. But if the population is stagnant, the retail pie is not growing. In such circumstances, “Wal-Mart is no different from any new business—large or small—coming to town and competing with incumbent businesses for finite spending in a community. Wal-Mart just competes for a larger share of it, and within a bigger geographic area.”