NEW YORK SITE FIGHT: EXPERTS WEIGH IN IN TONAWANDA
NORTH TONAWANDA: NT First wants expert testimony [Tonawanda News (N.Y.)]
The sale of Bluebird Drive to Wal-Mart, a key step in getting the project underway, has been discussed by officials and Wal-Mart as they await a lawsuit from Frank Budwey and NT First.
Instead, Budwey late last month submitted a 180-signature petition to the North Tonawanda Common Council asking them to hear comments by their own traffic expert, Andrew Wolfe, Ph.D, also a professor at SUNY Utica, prior to any sale of the access road.
Wolfe addressed the Planning Commission March 11 with a 14-page report. Then, NT First requested more information as the plans had undergone several key changes.
“After the March 11th meeting they gave us information but they didn’t give us the whole package,” Budwey said.
A Freedom of Information request filed a couple of months after the presentation sought data used to establish traffic impact after planners added an entrance to the store’s proposed site on Wurlitzer Drive.
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Posted by Luke West on Tuesday, October 07 | 0 comments | Permalink
NEW YORK SITE FIGHT: WAL-MART OPPONENTS FACE NOVEMBER DEADLINE
WALMART: Smart Growth faces November deadline [Lockport Union-Sun & Journal (N.Y.)]
Smart Growth of Lockport has until mid-November to state the specifics of its appeal to stop construction of a Super Walmart on the site of the vacant Lockport Mall.
The state Court of Appeals heard a request by Walmart late last month to either dismiss Smart Growth’s case for its lack of stating specific grounds of its appeal, or to set a deadline date for the filing, according to Town of Lockport Attorney Daniel E. Seaman.
The court set Nov. 21 as the date by which Smart Growth must file its appeal particulars, Smart Growth attorney Daniel Spitzer said Monday.
When notice of appeal is filed, the plaintiff has up to nine months to state its case, Spitzer has said. Smart Growth filed notice of its intent in early June, meaning it could have had until early March 2009 to put its particular grievances in writing. The court’s ruling on Walmart’s request thus speeds up the timetable.
Preparing the appeal isn’t the arduous part, Spitzer said; it’s compiling the record of municipal proceedings that cleared the way for Walmart to build on the mall site. Smart Growth will make the deadline, he added.
Also see: Deadline set in appeal by Wal-Mart foes [Buffalo News (N.Y.)]
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Posted by Luke West on Tuesday, October 07 | 0 comments | Permalink
NEW HAMPSHIRE SITE FIGHT: HOOKSETT STORE GOING ‘GREEN’
New Hooksett Wal-Mart planning to go ‘green’ [Union-Leader (N.H.)]
HOOKSETT – The new Wal-Mart, slated to open next summer, announced plans this week to design an on-site treatment plant to process in-store wastewater.
Attorney Amy Manzelli of Concord-based firm Sulloway and Hollis attended a Hooksett Conservation Commission meeting Wednesday and briefed members on ways Wal-Mart intends to make the store a little more environmentally responsible.
By decreasing the size of the building from 224,000 to 162,000 square feet—a plan laid out last spring—and by processing wastewater on site, Wal-Mart says it wants to help reduce the impact on surrounding wetlands, Manzelli said.
“Wal-Mart is making an effort to green its stores,” Manzelli said. “That’s what we’re trying to do with this project.” The store is currently under construction on the corner of Bemus Road and Route 3A.
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Posted by Luke West on Friday, October 03 | 0 comments | Permalink
St.Albans, VT. Vermont Governor To Appear At Pro-Wal-Mart Rally
It’s payback time in Vermont. Wal-Mart has donated to Vermont Governor Jim Douglas’ re-election campaign, and now the Governor is returning the favor by speaking at the company’s rally in the town of St. Albans on October 4th. The rally is designed to show support for Wal-Mart’s controversial supercenter project in St. Albans, which has been headline news for 15 years.
On April 22, 2008, Sprawl-Busters reported that Wal-Mart has been rejected once in St. Albans by the state. The company is now in the thick of its second attempt to push its way onto a cornfield across from the St. Albans Drive-In, just off Route 89, a few miles south of the Canadian border. Wal-Mart lost its first attempt in 1995 in a case that went all the way to the Vermont Supreme Court. In this second try, local officials in the town have again given the store its blessing, as well as the regional commission set up under Vermont’s Act 250 land use control law.
The city of St. Albans which abuts the town, has opposed the project because of the damage the superstore will do to the downtown. A neighboring developer that has a Price Chopper grocery store as a tenant is also fighting the Wal-Mart. The Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) and local residents have filed the legal paperwork needed for a “Motion to Alter” to ask the District 6 Commission to reverse its position and rescind the granting of an Act 250 permit that would allow the Wal-Mart superstore. In addition to the VNRC, the citizen’s group the Northwest Citizens for Responsible Growth (NWCRG) and farmers Marie Frey and Richard Hudak, appealed.
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Posted by Al Norman on Friday, October 03 | 0 comments | Permalink
MASSACHUSETTS SITE FIGHT: PIONEER VALLEY FIGHTS WAL-MART
Big Box Battle [Valley Advocate (Mass.)]
In Greenfield, a group of citizens is fighting plans by a Connecticut developer to build a massive store and parking lot on a piece of land that’s home to several wetlands.
The developer has not said which company would rent the store, which would be bigger than the Wal-Mart stores in Northampton and Hadley. But it has proposed a 160,000-square-foot store that would include a garden center. City officials earlier this summer said the tenant would likely be Wal-Mart, Target, or another national corporation.
The proposed location on French King Highway near Route 2 is too far from downtown for most people to walk. There are no sidewalks on the road near the site. “This is a terrible place for a store like this,” said Patricia Marcus, one of the Greenfield activists “That means thousands of additional car trips.” That, in turn, would mean more global warming-causing pollution and traffic jams.
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Posted by Luke West on Thursday, October 02 | 0 comments | Permalink
MASSACHUSETTS SITE FIGHT: NEW LAW TO PUT STATE IN RISK OF UNWANTED WAL-MARTS?
Chapter 40B now allows commercial projects [Enterprise News (Mass.)]
BOSTON —
An expansion of the state’s Chapter 40B affordable housing law to include non-residential projects is putting communities at more risk of unwanted development, some experts say.
According to regulations released earlier this year by the state Department of Housing and Community Development, Chapter 40B projects can now include commercial, institutional or other non-residential uses.
“The new regulations leave every neighborhood susceptible to a developer’s inclusion of a Wal-Mart, liquor store or movie theater within a comprehensive permit project,” Attorney Jonathan D. Witten wrote in the Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review. Witten represents several local appeals boards, including in Middleboro.
The change is new enough that few Chapter 40B proposals include a commercial component yet. One that does will be debated when the Duxbury appeals board holds a hearing on Oct. 9 for a 238-unit project that includes 28,000 square feet of commercial space.
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Posted by Luke West on Tuesday, September 30 | 0 comments | Permalink
Johnstown, PA. Wal-Mart Backs Down From Second Superstore
It appears that one Wal-Mart supercenter is enough for now in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Superstore #1935 is located on Town Centre Drive in Johnstown, roughly 14 miles away from another supercenter in Ebensburg, 18 miles from a third superstore in Blairsville, and 21 miles from a fourth supercenter in Somerset. This central Pennsylvania trade area is already flooded with supercenters. So residents in Johnstown are likely sighing with relief this week, upon hearing that the community won’t be the site of a second Wal-Mart superstore. After all, the demographics just aren’t very encouraging. In 1990, there were 28,134 people in Johnstown city---but by 2007, the population had plunged to only 21,832. Almost a quarter of Johnstown’s consumer base has disappeared over the past 17 years. Another Wal-Mart would simply cannibalize their existing store, and take more market share from those retailers still standing. This was not an economic development project---and it appears Wal-Mart realized that.
According to the Tribune-Democrat, local officials have given up hope that Wal-Mart would expand into their downtown. This week that fantasy ended. “We’re simply not a top priority as opposed to other, high-growth areas,” Ron Repak, Johnstown Redevelopment Authority executive director told the newspaper.
The large retailer’s interest in a second Johnstown superstore came from an unlikely source. Democratic state Senator John Wozniak sent the company a letter last year asking Wal-Mart, and other big box stores to consider Johnstown as a site. This was before Wal-Mart store managers began lobbying their workers to vote for Republicans in the presidential race. Wal-Mart actually took Wozniak up on his offer, and visited Johnstown last year, showing interest in the downtown, as a way to relieve pressure on its other nearby stores. But now a more sober assessment is prevailing in Johnstown. The head of the Redevelopment Authority did not rule out all hope, but noted the Wal-Mart proposal was “not a dead issue or completely off the radar screen.” The screen is dark however, since no more meetings with the retailer have been scheduled.
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, September 30 | 0 comments | Permalink
Weekly Update for Elected Officials: Sept. 24, 2008
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 begins with reports of price gouging on the part of Wal-Mart. What’s truly abhorrent about these reports, however, is that they are being made by the very people affected most by the recent cavalcade of hurricanes to batter the Gulf coast. The Arkansas News Bureau and The Consumerist have more on these stories.
You’ll also find major news on the legal front. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed its second lawsuit against Wal-Mart in less than three weeks. The first involves the Americans with Disabilities Act in Illinois; the second involves age discrimination against a 67-year-old optician in Missouri. In addition to the EEOC lawsuits, Wal-Mart will now have to face another class action wage/hour lawsuit. Salvas v. Wal-Mart was originally certified as a class action back in 2004. Since then the case has gone back and forth through the Massachusetts court system, eventually being decertified and winding up in front of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on appeal. Well, the SJC released its opinion this week, ruling that the decertification was improper and that the lawsuit should be reinstated as a class action. A trial is possible, which could cost Wal-Mart hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid wages and damages. The Boston Globe and Boston Herald have the story.
Also check out the Product and Food Safety Report, where you’ll find stories on BPA (and a class action lawsuit regarding the chemical that includes Wal-Mart), dangerous soccer goals and baby cribs sold at Wal-Mart, and a pet food recall involving Purina products sold at the retailer.
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 [September 24, 2008]
Posted by Corey Himrod on Wednesday, September 24 | 2 comments | Permalink
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