Wal-Mart Loves Vermont
Wal-Mart and the Battle of Vermont [Boston Globe]
There is a funny musical playing in Manhattan called “Walmartopia.” The critics hated it, but I liked it, not so much for its generic Wal-Mart bashing - that’s like throwing strikes to Andre the Giant - but for its hilarious depiction of Vermont as an island of resistance to the Bentonville, Ark.-based behemoth.
Half the play is set in 2037, when only armed guerrillas from Vermont, led by dictators Ben and Jerry, are opposing the Wal-Martification of the United States. Instead of teaching children to watch television at School-Mart, a rebellious Vermont teacher instructs his charges how to make puppets, and so on.
That’s quite a compliment for the Green Mountain State, where enviro types and citizens’ groups have been opposing Bentonville’s big box schemes for well over a decade. But here’s the rub: Wal-Mart loves Vermont! Or at least it loves those Green Mountain greenbacks. Why else would it keep coming back?
The first shots in the Battle of Vermont were fired back in 1993, when Wal-Mart tried to site a hideous, 100,000-square-foot box in St. Albans. At the time, Vermont was the only state in the union without a Wal-Mart, and for a while it preserved its retail virginity. The Vermont Supreme Court nixed the St. Albans location, prompting Howard Dean, the governor at the time, to suggest that Wal-Mart place stores in flagging New England downtowns, rather than in suburban megamalls.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, September 12 | 0 comments | Permalink
N. Tonawanda, NY. Wal-Mart Emotions Run High
Shouting match over Wal-Mart [Tonowanda News (NY)]
Tensions were high as Wal-Mart supporters and detractors packed a public hearing Monday to respond to the environmental impact survey of the proposed superstore, prompting the North Tonawanda Planning Commission to call police officers to control the public.
Some residents in the standing-room only crowd wore stickers that said “Wal-Mart: Yes.” One woman brought a cardboard sign with black marker written on it: “Wal-Mart is #1.” Some booed and heckled speakers who criticized the draft environmental impact statement as incomplete.
David Seeger, an attorney representing North Tonawanda First, a residents group opposed to the building of a Wal-Mart superstore, said he was “puzzled” by some parts of the survey analyzing traffic impact.
The survey states traffic at the Erie Avenue/Walck Road intersection, among others, would improve if the Wal-Mart was built, despite a surge in cars using the route daily and without mitigation from the company, he said.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, September 12 | 0 comments | Permalink
N. Tonowanda, NY. Hearing Comes to Blows
North Tonawanda city clerk calls police when Wal-Mart hearing gets rowdy [Buffalo News (NY)]
Both opponents and supporters of a proposed Wal-Mart supercenter pushed their messages during a public hearing on the project’s environmental impact in City Hall Monday evening.
The fiery debate prompted City Clerk Thomas M. Jaccarino to call for assistance from city police 20 minutes into the session as verbal disputes erupted simultaneously in the front and back of the room.
The two uniformed officers maintained their presence among the more than 90 people who packed Council Chambers, but did not remove anyone from the room.
The Planning Commission held the public hearing to take comment on a proposal to build a 185,000-square-foot store near Niagara Falls Boulevard and Erie Avenue on the sites of the former Melody Fair and Bluebird Bus garage.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, September 12 | 0 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart Re-Uses Flawed Reporting Methods
In a report released today (PDF), Wal-Mart claimed that it saves families $2,500 a year. Citing generic drugs and in-store banking centers, the new report sings the “low prices” gospel, but it fails to take into account the hidden costs of having a Wal-Mart in town: higher taxes, lower average wages, and fewer local businesses.
In June of 2006, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report attacking the flawed methodology Global Insight used to calculate customers’ supposed savings. It is the very same methodology Global Insight used again in this year’s study. The “research” glosses over a whole host of problems the company creates, not to mention the fact that Global Insight - far from independent - was comissioned by Wal-Mart to conduct this study. Legitimate, independent reports not commissioned by Wal-Mart show that when the company comes to town, poverty levels go up, wages go down and small businesses go away.
From the report:
- A widely quoted figure from a study by the consulting firm Global Insight (GI) indicates that Wal-Mart’s expansion has resulted in $263 billion in savings to U.S. consumers. We find this to be implausible. The statistical analysis generating this highly influential result fails the most rudimentary sensitivity checks.
- A robust set of research findings shows that Wal-Mart’s entry into local labor markets reduces the pay of workers in competing stores. This effect is greatest in the South, where Wal-Mart expansion has been greatest.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, September 12 | 31 comments | Permalink
Johnson City, NY. Board to Decide on WMT
Wal-Mart’s impact focus of hearing [Press & Sun-Bulletin (NY)]
The Johnson City Planning Board expects to make a decision later this month that could pave the way for a Wal-Mart Supercenter at a brownfield site.
About 75 people attended a meeting Monday night at the village courthouse for a public hearing concerning subdividing the site at 90 Lester Ave. into two parcels.
Developer Marc Newman would like to divide the site into a 12.38-acre lot for the proposed Wal-Mart, and a 1.287-acre lot for retail/restaurant space. The planning board also discussed the project’s environmental impact.
Planning board Chairman Gerald Putman told the crowd he expects the planning board to rule on the project’s environmental impact at the planning board’s next meeting at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 25. The board is still waiting for the state Department of Transportation to finish reviewing the planner’s proposed changes to the traffic signal timing.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, September 11 | 1 comments | Permalink
Freetown, MA. Small Town Passes Big Box Cap
On May 5, 2007 Sprawl-Busters reported that Wal-Mart had filed an application to build a superstore on top of a former coal ash landfill in Freetown, Massachusetts, with rare turtle habitat, and millions of dollars of needed traffic improvements. Developer K.R. Rezendes proposed a Fly Ash Landfill Redevelopment on 81.38 acres, which operated until 2002, when it ceased accepting and disposing of coal ash. 80% of the landfill has been capped, and the remaining 20% uncapped landfill will be filled over as part of the “Payne’s Crossing” project. This huge retail project will create 40 acres of impervious surface area. It also contains nearly 10 acres of bordering vegetated wetlands, and nesting habitat for the Diamondback Terrapin, a state protected threatened species. In Phase I the fly ash landfill would be closed, followed by construction of a 170,000 s.f. home improvement store, a 217,000 s.f. Wal-Mart supercenter, and 1,600 parking spaces. In phase II, 95,700 sf of retail space would be added in five separate retail buildings, plus another 380 parking spaces.
More than 482,000 s.f. of stores would be built in total. This massive project would generate more than 25,100 car trips on a Saturday. Local residents have been fighting the project since the day the project was first announced. Residents went on the defensive, and got the town recently to pass a new zoning by-law “intended to preserve the small town character of the town of Freetown by limiting the size of retail establishments, wholesale establishments, and shopping centers.” Under the “cap” bylaw, “no single retail business, whether located in a single structure, a combination of structures, single tenant space, or aggregate of structures or tenant spaces in an aggregate of structures, shall exceed 25,000 s.f of floor area.” Any adjacent retail “which shares a common check stand, management, controlling ownership, or storage areas shall be considered a ‘single retail business’ and their aggregate square footage or floor area” is calculated into the size cap. The same 25,000 s.f. cap is applied to whole businesses, and to shopping centers. The bylaw also says all shopping centers and retail stores must be located on land that has at least 70,000 s.f. in area, and 20% of that land area must remain open space. The bylaw does allow a store or shopping center to exceed 25,000 s.f. in an industrial zone---but only with a Special Permit from the planning board. The town also added a Site Plan Review bylaw that is designed to “protect neighboring properties against harmful effects of uses on the development site.”
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, September 10 | 0 comments | Permalink
Swansea, MA. Wal-Mart Denies Its Expansion Plans
Swansea, Massachusetts is a small community of roughly 16,000 people in southeastern Massachusetts, bordered by Barrington and Warren, Rhode Island, on the west and southwest, about 47 miles south of Boston, and 12 miles southeast of Providence, Rhode Island. The community already has a 100,000 s.f. Wal-Mart discount store at the Swansea Mall, which calls itself “a complete entertainment experience.” But now, as part of its drive to replace all discount stores, Wal-Mart has applied to build a bigger superstore in Swansea. The new store would expand to 161,000 s.f. according to a site plan submitted to the town by the mall’s owner, the Carlyle Development Group, based in White Plains, New York. Carlyle has been around since 1982, and calls itself an “expert in identifying undervalued real estate.” Carlyle bought the Swansea Mall six years ago from an insurance company, and the New York State Pension Fund. At that time, half of the four anchor spots at the Mall were vacant. Macy’s and Sears are two existing anchors in the Swansea Mall. Swansea’s Zoning Board was scheduled to meet this week to take up the expansion request---but apparently Wal-Mart doesn’t know about it. A company spokesman told the Providence Journal, “Wal-Mart has no publicly announced plans for Swansea at this time.” A formal site plan proposal submitted to a town is a “publicly announced plan,” yet the company was clearly not ready to lift the veil from its proposal. What Wal-Mart is doing in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, is systematically expanding or replacing its inventory of discount stores-—most of which were built in the 1990s.
Wal-Mart says it wants to build supercenters in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, in Woonsocket and Warwick, Rhode Island. These three supercenter proposals are relocations from existing stores---so three “dark stores” will be created by this power shift into larger boxes. Wal-Mart already has two supercenters in Rhode Island, which calls itself the “Ocean State,” but the ocean increasingly seems to refer to the ocean of asphalt created by big box developers. A Wal-Mart opened in the city of Providence, Rhode Island this year.
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, September 10 | 0 comments | Permalink
NEW YORK SITE FIGHT: DECISION EXPECTED NEXT WEEK
Northgate Wal-Mart decision coming [Rochester Democrat and Chronicle]
Greece residents could learn as soon as Wednesday whether retail giant Wal-Mart will receive permission to build in Northgate Plaza on Dewey Avenue.
Gary Tajkowski, the town’s director of development services, said the Planning Board and Board of Zoning Appeals have scheduled a joint meeting for Wednesday at Town Hall to give their decisions in the matter.
The Wal-Mart project entails tearing down part of the existing Northgate Plaza to make way for a 146,000-square-foot superstore and a 4,000-square-foot McDonald’s. Town officials have been considering the plan and questioning developers since early this year, and have held numerous public hearings where residents and neighbors aired their concerns.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, September 07 | 1 comments | Permalink
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