Davie, FL. Wal-Mart Files Second Lawsuit After Town Rejection
Wal-Mart has more lawsuits than men’s suits. The retailer proposed to build a 24/7 superstore on 36 acres of land in Davie, Florida. The project was vigorously opposed by residents of the Rolling Hills Lake Estates, and Pine Island Bay. In July of 2006, Wal-Mart couldn’t muster a single vote when their project came before the Davie Town Council. The retailer’s plans for a 202,853 s.f. superstore were slam-dunked on a 4-0 vote. Council members ruled that the store would destroy local businesses and create too much of a disruption for nearby residents. Wal-Mart’s argument hinged on a legal settlement from 17 years ago that allowed larger stores than the town now permits. Not willing to respect the wishes of local officials, Wal-Mart filed a lawsuit in Broward Circuit Court in October of 2006, charging that council members wrongly denied their plan. On March 21, 2007, Sprawl-Busters reported that a Broward County, Florida judge gave residents in Davie, Florida a victory, siding with the town. But Wal-Mart appealed that circuit court decision in March, 2007, and last week filed a second lawsuit on the federal level. Wal-Mart went to federal court to try to get a judge to enforce the 1989 legal settlement between the town and the property’s former owner. Wal-Mart now owns the property, and is trying to use the 1989 agreement to allow them to build. “We’re basically asking a court to enforce the agreement we had with the town of Davie, so the town will do what it promised to do,” a Wal-Mart spokesman told the Miami Herald. The town’s lawyer says the 1989 settlement with a former owner does not transfer to Wal-Mart, and that the retailer is just “shopping around’’ for another judge. I guess they didn’t like the result they got in the state Circuit Court,” the town’s attorney said. Now Davie taxpayers have to ante up more money to defend themselves against a second Wal-Mart lawsuit. The town has to respond to the federal lawsuit by October 26th.
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, October 23 | 0 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart: America’s Tax Deadbeat
This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post.
A report released this week by the non-profit group Good Jobs First, concludes that Wal-Mart methodically works to lower its taxes by challenging the assessed value of its stores and distribution centers. Just as the company has become legendary for shaking down its vendors---so the retailer shakes down cities and towns for tax rebates.
The nonpartisan research center in Washington, D.C. documented in an earlier study how Wal-Mart has benefited from billions of dollars in public subsidies to build its stores and site infrastructure. Their new analysis, Rolling Back Property Tax Payments, charges that although the financial take is not as large as its public welfare subsidies---Wal-Mart “drains vitally needed funds from communities by regularly challenging the valuation put on its properties by public officials.” According to Philip Mattera, research director of Good Jobs First, “When the company succeeds in one of these challenges, it diminishes the funds available to pay for education, police and fire protection, and other essential services provided by local governments.”
Good Jobs First reviewed a national sample of Wal-Mart stores and all of its distribution centers open as of the beginning of 2005. Wal-Mart has filed assessment challenges at more than one-third of its facilities around the country. At many facilities there have been appeals in multiple years. Overall, Good Jobs First estimates that Wal-Mart filed more than 2,100 property tax challenges nationwide. “These systematic property tax challenges are part of a larger pattern of state and local tax avoidance by Wal-Mart,” Mattera explained.
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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, October 16 | 23 comments | Permalink
Venice, FL. Future Unsure
Wal-Mart Clouds Vision [Herald Tribune (Fla.)]
Venice officials once gave people the impression that a village of shops, restaurants, homes and health care facilities would emerge in the city’s northeast corner. “North Venice,” as they called it in 2005, was portrayed as a second downtown. The site would be around the interchange of Interstate 75 and the nearby intersection of Laurel Road and Knight’s Trail.
Unfortunately, the Venice City Council failed to create an overall plan to achieve the quaint village that residents were led to expect. As a result, the development pattern unfolding is typical of the big-box retail at interchanges around the nation.
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Posted by Andrew Yonki on Monday, October 15 | 0 comments | Permalink
Sherwood, AR. Neighbors Find Living Next To Wal-Mart Like A Living Hell
Do good walls make good neighbors? Mayor Virginia Hillman of Sherwood, Arkansas must be feeling somewhat embattled this month. Hillman describes the town she lives in as a rapidly growing community of 23,100 people located just a few miles north of Little Rock. She says Sherwood was rated by the Wall Street Journal as “one of the ten best cities in the United States in which to live.” But that was prior to the latest Wal-Mart controversy. The Mayor says Sherwood offers “a hometown atmosphere” with the “amenities of a larger metropolitan area.” One of those amenities has to be the ten Wal-Mart stores within 20 miles of Sherwood, including a Wal-Mart supercenter on East Mccain Boulevard just two miles away. When Wal-Mart proposed adding yet another 200,000 s.f. supercenter to the area-—this time in Virginia Hillman’s town-—no one in town government raised a finger to object. But now some of the residents of Sherwood may feel their “hometown atmosphere” has disappeared. Several weeks ago, Wal-Mart held a public meeting with neighborhoods which will lie near the company’s supercenter location. According to the Sherwood Voice newspaper, tensions were high between Wal-Mart and the 60 people in the audience “who complained about ponding water, mosquitos, months of loud dynamite blasts, the frequent sounds of rock cracking and smashing machines, clouds of dust, films of dust on their cars, shrinking property values, and houses for sale in their neighborhood that aren’t selling.” Like most communities that realize the truth about living next to a supercenter too late, these small town Arkansas residents only wanted to talk about the 12 foot wall they want Wal-Mart to build. “If you put up a wall then that will satisfy us,” said one Katye Lane resident. But Wal-Mart’s spokesperson was scripted to give residents the bad news: her company studied the cost of erecting such a wall, and concluded it would be too expensive and would make the Supercenter a less profitable operation. The spokesperson refused to tell neighbors how much such a wall would cost, dismissing the subject by saying, “Every (Wal-Mart) has to be able to support itself.” To build at this site, Wal-Mart has spent months blasting away at rocks. The retailer’s engineering firm admitted that they ran into more rock at the site than they anticipated, which resulted in added costs to the project.
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, October 15 | 0 comments | Permalink
Venice, FL. Residents Ask for Boutiques, Not Big Boxes
None of the literature about Venice, Florida mentions a Wal-Mart supercenter. The tourist pamphlets say the proverbial “Venice Florida offers something for everyone,” including beautiful beaches, a quaint downtown shopping area, and the old Florida scenery along the Myakka River. The area boasts miles of white sand, sea shells and the prehistoric shark teeth which earned Venice the title of “Sharks Tooth Capital of the world.” But another shark---this one retail---is taking a big bite out of Venice. Construction of the Intracoastal Waterway in 1963 made an island of the Venice’s commercial district, and helped maintain the pattern of growth that exists today. The city made a point of preserving the original character of Venice, creating the Historic Venice District and an Architectural Review Board to ensure that new construction or modification of existing buildings conform to the northern Italian Renaissance style of the city’s original architecture. The state also designated the community as a Florida Main Street City to “assure the city’s heritage will be preserved.” Despite all this rhetoric, the chain stores were also attracted to Venice. There are 7 Wal-Mart’s within 20 miles of Venice, 5 of them are supercenters, including a supercenter right in Venice on South Tamiami Trail. But the Arkansas retailer wound up with sand in its coffee this week as local residents rose up in opposition to a planned supercenter on Laurel Road near the tony Venetian Golf & River Club.
“Wal-Mart would destroy the community that can economically support quality shops,” Venetian residents Ronni and Cos Mallozzis said in an email to city officials. The proposed 200,000-s.f. Wal-Mart inside the 73-acre Renaissance development east of Interstate 75 will come before Venice’s planning commission this coming Tuesday. According to the Herald Tribune, people in Venice want commercial development---they just don’t want Wal-Mart. “We really need commercial development, but we need the right kind of commercial development,” Venetian Golf & River Club resident John Moeckel told the newspaper.
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, October 15 | 0 comments | Permalink
Venice, FL. Community Pushes to Reject Wal-Mart
Venice community opposes Wal-Mart [Herald Tribune (Fla.)]
Nobody complained about the movie theater. The bank was OK, too.
But Wal-Mart just does not mesh with the ritzy Venetian Golf & River Club down the street, say some residents, who are trying to stop the company’s proposed Laurel Road store.
“Wal-Mart would destroy the community that can economically support quality shops,” wrote Venetian residents Ronni and Cos Mallozzis in an e-mail to the city this week.
Area residents are pushing for the city to reject the 200,000-square-foot Wal-Mart as an anchor for the 73-acre Renaissance development east of Interstate 75. Wal-Mart hopes to ease residents’ concerns when the project goes before Venice’s planning commission Tuesday.
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Posted by Andrew Yonki on Friday, October 12 | 0 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart Settles Lawsuit
Wal-Mart settles lawsuit over stool use
A settlement has been reached in a federal lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. over claims that a female employee’s supervisors failed to meet her medical needs during a problematic pregnancy.
Terms of the out-of-court agreement were not released in court documents Thursday. The sides signed a confidentiality agreement, said Judith Rebecca Hass, attorney for Maggie Collins, a former customer service manager at Wal-Mart Supercenter No. 144, 2875 W. Sixth St. in Fayetteville.
The lawsuit, filed in September 2006 in U. S. District Court in Fayetteville, claimed Collins’ former bosses told her she couldn’t use a stool at work because “it did not look good.”
Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, didn’t dispute that Collins wasn’t allowed to sit on a stool to do her work. The retail giant instead argued that Collins stated no “cognizable legal claim under any theory, and she is unable to point to a disputed material fact such that a reasonable jury could find in her favor.”
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Posted by Andrew Yonki on Friday, October 12 | 0 comments | Permalink
Duluth, GA. Wal-Mart Did Not Reach Out To Duluth Residents
Wal-Mart did not reach out to Duluth Residents [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
Mr. Steve Cauley’s commentary in the AJC ("Consider Wal-Mart’s track record in community support,” AJC Gwinnett Opinions, Sept. 30) about Wal-Mart’s monetary contributions to the communities and how building a new supercenter in Duluth will make our lives better has led Smart Growth Gwinnett Inc. to release our official response.
We recognize that the items published were intended to convey his personal opinion, but, as a market manager for Wal-Mart, he is also representing the corporation.
We want to clarify some points in Mr. Cauley’s message to the public.
He makes reference to open dialogue about the new store plans, working with residents, communities and local officials in his letters. Unfortunately, this has not been the case for the Duluth residents in the communities surrounding the proposed site.
Wal-Mart did not reach out to the local residents when it identified the new site. The residents of these communities became aware of the proposed development when the news about the variance requests was brought to light, a few weeks before the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting where the requests were to be considered.
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Posted by Corey Himrod on Wednesday, October 10 | 0 comments | Permalink
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