NEW YORK SITE FIGHT: PRO-WAL-MART GROUP
A Group That Supports Wal-Mart in the Town of Evans [WIVB News (Buffalo, NY)]
We’re used to seeing a lot of opposition to Wal-Mart, but Thurday night a group that supports the retail giant wants to be heard.
Instead of fighting to keep Wal-Mart out of town, a group in Evans is supporting the retail giant.
The super center would go in at the Grandview Drive-in, which is causing a controversy in this small town. It’s a community divided as Evans residents fight over whether or not to welcome a Wal-Mart into their town.
Tony Troidl, Friends of the Grandview says, “Do they really want to put a store in or do they want a four or five year court battle over this property.”
An Angola resident in favor of wal-mart says, “I feel we need a department store around here, we have nothing.”
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, September 07 | 0 comments | Permalink
New Report Calls Wal-Mart Environmental Initiatives “Smoke and Mirrors”
A new report jointing published by 23 organizations across the country calls on Wal-Mart to reframe its sustainability efforts so that workers, the environment and communities are all respected. The report examines several specific areas where Wal-Mart falls short of its claim of environmental-friendliness. Areas of focus include Wal-Mart’s organics, seafood, wood sourcing, product packaging, dangerous toys, contributions to global warming, energy use, and waste quantities. The report goes on to incorporate workers’ rights and community impact analyses, retaining a wholistic view of Wal-Mart’s business model overall. From the introduction:
Nearly two years ago, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott announced a bold initiative to turn the world’s largest company green. A long-anticipated fi rst progress report on these sustainability goals is expected to be released soon. In advance of the company’s report, 23 environmental, farm, labor, and other civil society groups have offered their own critiques of Wal-Mart’s approach to
sustainability.Some of these critiques focus on specific Wal-Mart commitments and offer recommendations for change. Others argue that even if Wal-Mart achieved all of its stated goals, the company’s
business model makes it inherently unsustainable. All of them remind us of what’s at stake by demonstrating Wal-Mart’s huge and often devastating impacts on real people and places in the
United States and around the world.
Click here to download the full report from the Big Box Collaborative.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, September 06 | 2 comments | Permalink
RHODE ISLAND SITE FIGHT: WAL-MART TO EXPAND IN SWANSEA
Wal-Mart considering supercenter makeover at Swansea Mall [The Providence (R.I.) Journal]
Discount giant Wal-Mart wants to replace its store at Swansea Mall with a supercenter, a mall executive said yesterday, the latest move by the Arkansas company to expand in Southeastern New England.
Wal-Mart is seeking to replace its 100,000-square-foot store at the mall with a larger building that would allow it to sell groceries, in addition to its standard lineup of apparel, home goods and other items, according to Jason Huer, the mall’s general manager. The new building would be 161,000 square feet.
Swansea’s Zoning Board was scheduled to meet last night to take up an expansion request by mall owner Carlyle Development Group, according to a clerk in the Swansea town offices.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, September 06 | 0 comments | Permalink
NEW YORK SITE FIGHT: JOHNSON CITY RESIDENTS DIVIDED OVER WAL-MART
JC battle line forms over Wal-Mart [N.Y. Press & Sun-Bulletin]
Residents speak for, against plan for storeIf those attending a village board meeting Tuesday were any indication, Johnson City residents are split nearly 50-50 on the merits of a plan to put a Wal-Mart in the village.
Those speaking against the retail store said it would hurt local businesses and cited concerns about Wal-Mart’s employment practices, while those in favor said the cash-strapped village could not afford to pass up the chance for development and the tax dollars the store would bring.
About 100 people attended the village board meeting Tuesday night in the village courthouse. The board took no action on the plan, which would put a 132,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter on a brownfield at 90 Lester Ave. The trustees are waiting for the planning board to make its recommendation on whether the village should issue a special permit to allow a retail business to operate in the industrial zone.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, September 05 | 0 comments | Permalink
Easy Steps for Overcoming Local Opposition
We couldn’t resist this sly commentary on big box development’s approach to fighting local opposition to their stores. This op-ed columnist from the LA Times makes crushing citizens’ groups sound so easy!
How to build whatever you want [Los Angeles Times]
Progress without strategy is regress. Time and again a new Wal-Mart or airport runway that would enable investors to make as much money as they want or consumers to travel twice as often from here to there is stalled by the Taliban mentalities of local resistance. Fortunately for America and its future, a formula exists whose careful application seldom fails. It deserves to be better known. Here it is.
Delay announcing your development for as long as possible. Never underestimate the element of surprise. This is not merely a matter of catching your opponents off-guard. Most people have an entrenched fatalism, as evidenced by the number of lottery tickets they buy. To give the appearance of a fait accompli is to take on the authority of fate. It was bound to happen. Whatcha gonna do?
Never lose an opportunity to outlast your opponents by outspending them. If there’s a formal approval process, do everything in your power to prolong it. Amend your proposal. Reschedule your testimony. The new paradigm of “let them eat cake” is “let them hold a bake sale”—again and again.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, September 05 | 1 comments | Permalink
NEW YORK SITE FIGHT: WAL-MART’S IMPACT ON TOWN LIFE
For some, Wal-Mart signals the end of an era [New York Star Gazette]
What is it about Wal-Mart that brings out such controversy?
What is it about so-called superstores or box stores that makes many people want to tear out their hair and the hearts of others?
There’s a lot of talk in Bath about too much traffic, environmental disaster, a threat to small businesses and probably the collapse of civilization, too.
To say that massive stores offering low, low prices (often with low-quality products to match) threaten civilization may be overstating the case.
But consider this: Isn’t it a civilized thing to be able to walk into a local shop, know the proprietor, talk to him or her and feel enriched after leaving the place?
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, September 04 | 0 comments | Permalink
Nashua, NH. Wal-Mart Developer Finally Gets Day In Court
A Wal-Mart developer faced off in court against city officials in Nashua, New Hampshire just before the Labor Day weekend began on September 1st.
The city denied Wal-Mart’s supercenter proposal, so the giant retailer did what it often does--went to court--this time in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire Superior Court. This case has lingered on for a year and eight months, but on September 1st, lawyers for the developer, AS-VR Realty, finally got their chance to assert that the Nashua Planning Board made a mistake in January of 2006 when they ruled that Wal-Mart could not tear down a Building 19 on Amherst St. and build a 147,000-s.f. Wal-Mart superstore. The developer claims that two of the planning board members politicized the review process. They claim that Planning board member Steve Dookran failed to maintain objectivity; tried to get traffic information from outside sources after the board finished deliberating; and improperly raised new concerns after the time period for doing so had passed, among other issues.
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, September 04 | 0 comments | Permalink
NEW YORK SITE FIGHT: WAL-MART OPPONENTS AND SUPPORTERS SQUARE OFF
Wal-Mart opponents, supporters square off [Steuben County Courier]
More than 100 area residents jammed a meeting of the Bath town planning board Thursday, as board members solicited responses to a draft scoping outline of an upcoming environmental impact study related to a proposed Wal-Mart super store on state Route 54.
The purpose of the meeting was to solicit additional comments that might expand the preliminary scoping outline beyond the scope prepared for the planning board by Fagan Engineers.
At times, however, the meeting threatened to turn into a free-wheeling debate between supporters of a local Wal-Mart store and those who oppose the construction of the 150,000- square foot “big box” store.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, August 27 | 0 comments | Permalink
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