Battle-Mart Site Fight E Action of the Week - Take Action to Battle Wal-Mart!
Every year, hundreds of Wal-Mart store development plans are thwarted by local community groups and activists. Battle–Mart brings news and updates of these fights, some of communities trying to stop a new Wal-Mart from being built, others of local groups uniting to prevent an existing Wal-Mart from expanding.
Each week, Battle-Mart will highlight local fights that need immediate action. The action may be a phone call to remind a Mayor in New England of the devastating effects Wal-Mart can have on a community, or an email to ask a board of commissioners in the Southwest to hear local residents’ reasons for wanting to stop sprawl. Check back each week to take action. Now it is your turn to take action to bust sprawl!
Ventura, CA
Citizens in Ventura, California have waited for months for their elected officials to clamp down on a Wal-Mart superstore development but now they are planning to go right to the voters to get what they want.
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Posted by Anna Gustina on Wednesday, January 23 | 13 comments | Permalink
Vallejo, CA. Wal-Mart Plans on Hold
What has happened to Vallejo’s Wal-Mart? [Times-Herald (Calif.)]
Vallejo’s Wal-Mart Supercenter plans are on hold, and city officials are trying to learn whether the retail giant intends to move forward with development plans at the old Kmart site.
Ringing up loads of controversy, Wal-Mart brought forward plans in 2006 to build a two-story 393,000-square-foot Supercenter at the 12.45-acre parcel at Sonoma Boulevard and Redwood Street, near White Slough.
Since then, Wal-Mart supporters and opponents have waged battle. The pros and cons of Wal-Mart also emerged as a hot-button issue during the recent mayoral and City Council campaigns.
City Manager Joe Tanner said Wal-Mart has not moved ahead. “The city is still waiting for Wal-Mart to sign an agreement to do the environmental and financial reports. They don’t seem to be proceeding at this time,” Tanner said.
Last April, a divided City Council agreed to hire a firm to help process an environmental review. The city hired a contract planner and was ready to hire an environmental consultant team last summer when Wal-Mart officials asked staff to hold off, saying they had cost concerns, said City Development Services Director Brian Dolan Dolan.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, January 22 | 0 comments | Permalink
Ventura, CA. Wal-Mart Defies Size Limit
Ventura votes to limit Wal-Mart’s size [Venturay County Star (Calif.)]
Wal-Mart could construct a multi-story retail building no larger than 100,000 square feet if it decides to raze a Kmart building it controls on Victoria Avenue in Ventura, the City Council agreed early Tuesday.
The size limit will apply to all future retail establishments, not just Wal-Mart, along the busy Victoria corridor between Highway 101 and Highway 126.
Wal-Mart opponents urged the council to set a 90,000-square-foot limit, arguing it would prevent the world’s largest retailer from constructing its traditional big-box store or a supercenter that includes groceries.
Wal-Mart has not filed a formal application to replace the Kmart, which is expected to close Sunday, but presented a conceptual plan to build a 150,000-square-foot store when it last met with city leaders.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, January 17 | 0 comments | Permalink
Gresham, OR. Wal-Mart Abandons Project, Sells Land
Wal-Mart looks to sell land [Gresham Outlook (Ore.)]
Gresham neighborhood leaders once again sat at a table Monday evening, Jan. 14, with the same people who represented Wal-Mart in a two-year battle ending with the retailer giving up on a supercenter in Gresham.
“Does anyone remember the last neighborhood meeting we had on this project?” Attorney Gregory Hathaway asked, drawing laughter, at the beginning of the meeting at City Hall. “I’ll never forget it.”
Hathaway’s jest underscored the contentiousness of past struggles to develop the 11-acre parcel near the corner of Southeast 182nd Avenue and Southeast Powell Boulevard.
The first development featured a QFC grocery store that went out of business in a year. Then Wal-Mart purchased the land with plans to build a supercenter. That plan won initial approval from the city, but was later rejected amid community outcry. The firestorm reached the state Land Use Board of Appeals, which sent it back to the city. A second rejection by a Gresham hearings officer in May was the final straw for Wal-Mart.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, January 17 | 0 comments | Permalink
Ventura, CA. City Votes For Size Limit, But Residents Want More
Citizens in Ventura, California have waited for months for their elected officials to clamp down on superstore development. They received a token vote this week---but now they are planning to go right to the voters to get what they want. On October 27, 2007, Sprawl-Busters updated the story of a Wal-Mart battle in Ventura. Activists in Ventura had galvanized around a report that Wal-Mart had signed a lease agreement on an existing K-Mart location in their city. Wal-Mart began talking with Ventura city planners in 2005 about demolishing the Kmart store on Victoria Avenue and replacing it with a 150,000 s.f. superstore, complete with grass and a fountain in front, plus an underground parking lot. In March, 2007, the City Council in Ventura adopted a 20-year “smart growth” plan for a seven-block area along Victoria Avenue that calls for more offices and pedestrian-friendly development. The council passed an “urgency” ordinance on Victoria Avenue that requires a building greater than 50,000 s.f. to undergo a special review and a use permit. City planners said that Wal-Mart appeared to be willing to meet the city’s new development guidelines, which would force the retailer to reduce the size of its store to a 60,000 s.f. maximum, and build it on two stories. But in the meantime, local residents had been pressuring the city to pass an ordinance controlling big-box development.
In October of 2007, Wal-Mart opponents unveiled an effort to go directly to voters to stop the superstore project. The “Stop Ventura Wal-Mart Coalition Action Team” said that city officials had ignored their calls for a local ordinance to ban supercenters, so they prepared language for a ballot measure. The group targeted the November 2008 ballot, and was prepared to gather 6,000 valid signatures, which is 10% of Ventura’s 60,000 registered voters, to get on the ballot. “We have not received the cooperation of our elected leaders, so we have decided to take the campaign to stop Wal-Mart directly to the voters,” said coalition leader Jim Alger of the Ventura County Working People’s Alliance, an organization affiliated with the Tri-County Labor Federation. “This will be a massive undertaking ... by concerned citizens who believe that we have a say in what does and doesn’t get built in our own community.” The coalition has prepared a slide show of Wal-Mart’s economic impact on communities, including images of Chinese workers in sweatshops. Current rules allow for a six-story building at the Kmart site. Several members of the Ventura City Council have tried to avoid antagonizing either side of this issue, and favor limiting big box growth through new development guidelines along the Victoria Avenue corridor where Wal-Mart wants to locate. The city had made little progress on such development guidelines over the past year, and the proposed rules were not reviewed by the City Council until this month. But officials say the new rules will be in place by the time Wal-Mart plans are considered.
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Posted by Al Norman on Thursday, January 17 | 0 comments | Permalink
Fontana, CA. Legal Fight Brewing
Wal-Mart, city at odds [San Bernadino Sun (Calif.)]
Wal-Mart’s plan to build two stores threatens to scuttle development plans years in the making and has city officials bracing for a court battle.
The retail giant has singled out the future site of the Promenade project - an upscale, “pedestrian-friendly” retail and housing complex in the city’s north end - as a location for one of its stores.Councilman John Roberts said the proposed Supercenter does not fit with the type of retail envisioned for the Promenade. He said the city would consider approving a Wal-Mart with a smaller footprint, one that is two stories tall accompanied by a parking structure.
In addition, Wal-Mart has submitted plans to build a 245,000-square-foot Supercenter near Slover and Sierra avenues on a parcel in the city’s south end where up to eight office buildings were planned, said Senior Planner Orlando Hernandez. Several buildings that were part of the original development plan have already been built, and the property neighbors the site where work recently began on a Hilton Gardens Inn, which caters to business travelers.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, January 15 | 0 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart’s Effect on Local Economies
An article in this month’s Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota’s gazette publication examines Wal-Mart’s effect on local communities. From the fedgazette:
[Wal-Mart] kills jobs and downtowns, say critics, and destroys community character. It’s been accused of discriminating against women, using illegal immigrants, requiring work off the clock and being overly aggressive in stopping the formation of labor unions among its workers.
It’s been blamed for sprawl and traffic congestion, as well as aesthetic offenses. For example, as the company upsizes from discount stores to supercenters in many towns, it often leaves behind an empty shell whose only visitors are the weeds that crop up in the unused parking lot, which might itself be in view of the new store. That new store, critics contend, probably received infrastructure upgrades that Wal-Mart strong-armed from local communities, lest it find a better offer elsewhere. The company adds a final dash of salt to the wound by repeatedly fighting (and mostly winning) property tax assessments on its stores.
The study finds that retail wages fell in every county examined with a Wal-Mart store, and that employee benefits were better in counties without Wal-Marts. Additionally, and perhaps most notably, the authors found that poverty rates were significantly higher in counties containing a Wal-Mart store. These findings seem to counter the authors’ assertion that Wal-Mart’s impact on local economies is minor.
This report is one of several dozen inquiries into Wal-Mart’s impact on local communities. Other such reports have examined Wal-Mart’s heavy reliance on public subsidies, the company’s influence on wages and stores’ damage to local ecosystems. Previous reports as well as scholarly papers and investigations can be found in our Research Center. More articles and reports on Wal-Mart’s negative impact on local economies can be found here.
Wal-Mart Has Minor Effect on Local Economy, Fed Says [Bloomberg News]
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, January 09 | 6 comments | Permalink
Judge Rules Against Wal-Mart in North Carolina Tax Shelter Case
Wal-Mart has saved millions of dollars over the past few years by essentially paying rent to itself and then writing off the taxes. Unfortunately for Wal-Mart, a North Carolina judge thinks that this isn’t entirely legal. The company is using this strategy in dozens of states - several have already moved to close the loophole after Wal-Mart’s actions were exposed in a February article from the Wall Street Journal. The N.C. judge’s decision on Friday could mean that Wal-Mart might have to start paying its fair share of real estate taxes - a lot more than it’s used to - not only in North Carolina but in communities across the country. The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog and financial bloggers at The Street provide further commentary.
Judge Rules Against Wal-Mart Over Its Tax-Shelter Dispute [Wall Street Journal]
A North Carolina state-court judge ruled against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in a closely watched tax-shelter case involving an arrangement in which the retailer essentially paid rent to itself and then deducted the amount from its taxes.
In an attachment to an order filed Friday, but signed on Dec. 31, Emergency Special Judge of Superior Court Clarence E. Horton Jr. wrote that Wal-Mart’s structure had no “real economic substance” other than cutting taxes. The judge dismissed Wal-Mart’s suit, in which it sought a refund of $33.5 million in taxes, interest and penalties that it paid after state tax authorities determined it had underpaid by that amount.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, January 07 | 76 comments | Permalink
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