Barstow, CA. Suit Over Distribution Center Progresses
Attorney sues Barstow over Wal-Mart distribution site plans [The Press-Enterprise (Calif.)]
An Upland lawyer has sued the city of Barstow, alleging the City Council erred when it approved an environmental impact report regarding a planned Wal-Mart distribution center.
That report was prepared inadequately and failed to take into full account all of the environmental problems the proposed logistics facility could create for the city, according to attorney Cory J. Briggs.
The lawsuit, which was filed Aug. 8 in the Barstow division of San Bernardino Superior Court, also alleges that city officials have failed to respond to public complaints about their environmental report, a possible violation of the California Environmental Quality Act.
City Council members approved the report July 21.
That $60 million facility, which would serve Wal-Mart Supercenters, could create up to 700 jobs within two to three years of its opening, Wal-Mart officials said.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, September 02 | 0 comments | Permalink
High Springs, FL. Wal-Mart Looking for a Green Light
Wal-Mart is set to receive the final nod of approval needed from the state for a local supercenter, a representative from the Florida Department of Transportation said.
The state has finalized their approval for a permit for a Wal-Mart in the city of Alachua and will issue a notice of intent to the business sometime this week, Gina Busscher with the FDOT said.
After receiving the notice of intent, Wal-Mart must then gain several approvals from the city of Alachua.
A notice of intent is issued by the FDOT as a placeholder for the actual final permit that will be issued after Wal-Mart gains all necessary permits from the city of Alachua, Busscher said. The notice of intent is valid for one year.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, September 02 | 0 comments | Permalink
Barstow, CA. City Sued Over Wal-Mart Distribution Center
On July 23, 2008, Sprawl-Busters reported that the city council in Barstow, California, had approved an enormous Wal-Mart distribution center.Wal-Mart already has 7 distribution centers in California. Barstow is located in the Inland Empire North region of San Bernardino County, midway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The city, with a population close to 25,000, says it has “all the major conveniences of small town living with the resources of major metropolitan areas only a short drive away.” The city describes itself as a major transportation corridor with more than 60 million people in 19 million vehicles traveling through Barstow each year. Barstow also has 20 Wal-Mart stores within 100 miles, and, the Barstow distribution center would become a hub for as many as 100 of the retailer’s stores, the brain of the retailer’s logistics system.
Wal-Mart currently has 112 distribution centers in the U.S., including than 40 Regional Distribution Centers. Each of these regional DC’s is over 1 million square feet in size---that’s roughly 20 football fields, or the size of 5 mammoth superstores under one roof. They operate 24/7 to keep Wal-Mart’s tractors and trailers rolling. Each facility has five miles of conveyor belts funneling 9,000 different lines of merchandise into trucks, with more than 8,000 drivers pounding out 850 million miles per year on public roadways. The typical DC supports between 75 and 100 stores within a 250-mile radius. Whatever small town living remains in Barstow will soon come to an end. The city council gave Wal-Mart a green light to build a mammoth DC in Barstow. The Council voted unanimously to approve a 1,078,000 s.f. food distribution center on 143 acres of open land.
The approval came with little discussion on July 21, 2008. Wal-Mart brought its employees into Barstow to testify in support of the DC, along with the President of the Barstow Community College, who told the Council to stand by Wal-Mart. “They have been as faithful to us as we need to be to them,” the college president said. The City Council had to continue the hearing in order to respond to a ˜late arriving comment letter’ from the Briggs Law Corporation in opposition to the project. City staff determined in a 25 page letter that the opposition by attorney Briggs was not warranted, and that the project should be approved.
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, September 02 | 0 comments | Permalink
Santa Rosa, CA. Judge Hands Wal-Mart Superstore A Setback
The war over a Wal-Mart superstore in Santa Rosa, California got a little noisier this week. A proposed Wal-Mart superstore has resulted in a lawsuit, not a ribbon-cutting.
This community is used to big box battles, having fought off a Home Depot in 1999 that tried to destroy a mobile home park. According to the Press Democrat newspaper, a judge in Sonoma County Superior Court on August 29th. agreed with anti-Wal-Mart residents that the environmental review done for the southwest Santa Rosa location was flawed. The lawsuit was brought by five Santa Rosa residents in 2007, seeking to overturn the approval of the Wal-Mart in the Roseland neighborhood of the city. During the hearings on the project, residents criticized Wal Mart’s “predatory business and labor practices,” its low pay and employee benefits, and its impact on other businesses in Santa Rosa. Judge Robert Boyd said the study of parking and noise from the project were “especially problematic.”
During the court hearing on August 29th, the city and opponents argued over the number of parking spaces, and the issue of noise impacts on abutting homes. The city said the store was 106,00 s.f., but the documents filed with the project ranged from 210,000 s.f. to 198,000 s.f. “What you’re seeing is a constantly changing project description,” said Attorney William Kopper, the lawyer for the Santa Rosa plaintiffs. According to the newspaper, Attorney Kopper has represented Wal-Mart opponents in at least half a dozen cities in California.
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, September 02 | 0 comments | Permalink
Blacksburg, VA. State’s Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Anti-Wal-Mart Appeal
On May 30, 2007, Sprawl-Busters reported that Wal-Mart had become ensnared in a legal mess in the town of Blacksburg, Virginia. The town of Blacksburg adopted land use ordinance 1450, which limits the size of retail buildings in town to 80,000 s.f. Larger buildings require a special use permit issued by the town council. Wal-Mart clearly wants to ignore laws like ordinance 1450.
Residents told Sprawl-Busters last year that they had succeeded in getting their zoning law passed. “After a marathon 5-hour public hearing,” citizens wrote, “the Blacksburg Town Council passed, by a 7-0 vote, an ordinance that will require a special use permit for any retail over 80,000 square feet. A grassroots effort by Blacksburg United for Responsible Growth (BURG) brought in petitions with over 3,500 signatures supporting the ordinance. This was more than the total number of votes cast in the last, hotly contested, mayoral election. Speakers at the hearing in favor of the ordinance outnumbered those opposed by a ratio of 8 to 1. Almost all of the opposition to the ordinance came from individuals with a direct stake in a development on South Main Street that includes a Wal-Mart Supercenter. The ordinance gives us the breathing room we need to have the thorough study and public discussion of the best way of regulating big box development. We will be looking at ways to strengthen the protections of the new ordinance. In order to circumvent the new law and the will of the town’s residents, the developers of the South Main project sued the town. They asked the circuit court to retroactively award them vested rights to build their supercenter. We are elated at the unequivocal statement that the Town Council has made, but are still focused on winning the case and stopping this project that would be disastrous for the town.”
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, September 02 | 0 comments | Permalink
Phoenix, AZ. After Two Years, Wal-Mart Cancels Lease With Developer
Wal-Mart is ready to build another store in Phoenix, Arizona, but after more than two years of trying, it keeps losing developers.
On April 11, 2008, Sprawl-Busters reported that a developer called The Bunch Company had left a 39,000 s.f. Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market all dressed up with nowhere to go. A planned 80,000 s.f. shopping center in the Ahwatukee neighborhood of Phoenix, near the Desert Foothills Parkway and Chandler Boulevard, was supposed to include a 24 hour Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market---which is the retailer’s “smallest” format store. But in April, it was revealed that The Bunch Company had a bunch of financial problems, and owed its bank $7.2 million, and the city of Phoenix $72,000 in property taxes. That left Wal-Mart nowhere in the neighborhood.
But Wal-Mart said it was ready to roll out its store, as soon as another owner stepped forward. “Nothing has changed from our end, we’re ready to move forward on the project,” a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart told the Foothill News. “It is a good location and a good area to serve.” The Bunch Company had planned to build another 40,000 s.f. of retailing around the Neighborhood Market. The city of Phoenix gave this project a green light in 2007, and Wal-Mart has invested several years into researching the site, according to the newspaper. “We spent extra time with city staff and the community to make sure they were comfortable with what we proposed,” Wal-Mart claimed. But with developers dropping like flies, it could be months, or even years, by the time Wal-Mart gets to Phoenix.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, August 28 | 0 comments | Permalink
First Photos of Wal-Mart’s New “Marketside” Stores
The Financial Times brings news that the Building Dept. of the City of Mesa, AZ. has posted on its website some of the first photos of Wal-Mart’s new “Marketside” stores. The stores signal a departure for Wal-Mart, as they are significantly smaller than the retailer’s traditional format and designed to compete head-to-head with UK retailer Tesco’s “Fresh and Easy” markets.
Marketside’s small format isn’t the only thing that distinguishes the pilot program from other Wal-Mart stores. Marketsides have completely independent design elements and don’t mention the word “Wal-Mart.” From the Financial Times:
The design includes a natural wood finish around the entrance, and deep-purple awnings - the same colour that will be used on the aprons of the staff, and on its website, http://www.marketplace.com. The Marketside name appears in lower case green lettering, with no reference to its parent company.
As Wal-Mart nears the U.S. saturation point for its traditional stores, the company has been forced to evolve into alternate formats. But Marketside’s distinct branding implies the company is worried customers have had enough not only of Supercenters, but of Wal-Mart itself.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, August 26 | 63 comments | Permalink
Rosemead, CA. Mayor Raises Money to Protect Himself From Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart made national news recently for trying to influence how their employees will vote in the upcoming Presidential campaign in November, demonizing the Democrats for their support of pro-union legislation. For many people, this was the first time they had seen Wal-mart trying to steer the outcome of a political election. Instead of just selling cheap underwear and Mickey Mouse lawn furniture—Wal-Mart has been retailing politics. The company has been trying to push the political outcome of races since it opened in 1962.
A recent case in point is Rosemead, California. On September 22, 2006, Sprawl-Busters reported that Wal-Mart spent $300,000 on campaign races in Rosemead. Sprawl-Busters reported that Wal-Mart had donated $200,000 to protect Rosemead Mayor Gary Taylor and Councilman Jay Imperial from a recall election brought by angry city voters who felt their elected officials sold them out on a Wal-Mart supercenter vote. But on the final day of the campaign, Wal-Mart donated another $100,000. It’s an old campaign finance trick: you make the commitment to spend $300,000, but you hold back actually paying for it so campaign officials don’t have to declare the money until the race is actually over, and voters have no idea how much was really spent until the polls have closed.
As a result of the unlimited spending allowed by corporations, the Mayor and the Councilor kept their seats with 59% of the vote—the best that Wal-Mart could buy. One local political analyst said the enormous financial support by Wal-Mart showed that the company would “stand by its friends.” The Mayor had good reason to welcome Wal-Mart’s generous campaign financing. In Rosemead’s elections in 2005, two Wal-Mart supporters were ousted and replaced with two opponents. Residents opposing Wal-Mart unseated two incumbent City Council members, and elected John Tran and John Nunez, who both went on to fight Wal-Mart. In that election, Wal-Mart did not raise a war chest, and it shows the difference an infusion of corporate wealth can make in an election outcome.
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, August 26 | 0 comments | Permalink
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