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Wal-Mart Watch and Sprawl-Busters Declare Victory as Wal-Mart Slows Growth
For Immediate Release
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
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Wal-Mart Watch and Sprawl-Busters Declare Victory as Wal-Mart Slows Growth
Americans across the country are defeating Wal-Mart’s super-sized plans for their communities in record numbers
Washington, D.C. - Wal-Mart Watch and Sprawl-Busters today declared a victory as Wal-Mart announced plans to slow its growth in the U.S. and focus its business on existing stores. While the company claims a weak economy is the reason for reducing capital expenditures, Wal-Mart Watch and Sprawl-Busters also cite increasing opposition from local communities – which have fought and defeated Wal-Mart plans in record numbers this year – as another impetus for the change.
From big cities to rural townships, communities across the country have rejected Wal-Mart. Chicago may have been the most high profile defeat for Wal-Mart when in May of this year the city ended talks with the company once and for all after it refused to budge on its low-wage, low-benefit policy for employees.
In Monsey, New York, a local orthodox Jewish population made national headlines when they fought and defeated a proposed Wal-Mart to preserve their local business and small-town way of life. Only a week ago, Cordova, Tennessee rejected a controversial Wal-Mart plan after hundreds of residents spoke out against the traffic and other problems that the store would bring to their community.
Sprawl-Busters, an organization led by Al Norman, the nation’s leading guru on fighting Wal-Mart, estimates that three out of every five new Wal-Marts run into forceful citizen opposition. Sprawl-Busters has counted over 80 Wal-Mart projects that have either been defeated by citizens or abandoned by the company since February 1, 2008, the highest annual number of lost projects in the history of Wal-Mart.
“Wal-Mart has built far too many stores already, and is cannibalizing its own sales,” said Sprawl-Busters’ Al Norman. “Communities across the country are standing up to – and winning – against Wal-Mart and its high-priced lawyers. Ten years ago, Wal-Mart was waltzing in anywhere it wanted, but not anymore.”
On Tuesday, Wal-Mart not only announced plans to slow growth, but also to grow with smaller stores. The company’s new Marketside stores, recently launched in Phoenix, Arizona, are about one tenth the size of a supercenter and – perhaps intentionally - don’t include any mention of the Wal-Mart name. The company said it plans to open 166 new U.S. stores in fiscal year 2009 and between 125 and 144 in fiscal year 2010. Those numbers, while still high, are significantly down from several years ago when the company was opening over 300 new stores a year.
“That Wal-Mart was forced to slow growth and focus on its current stores should be celebrated as a small victory for communities across the country,” said Wal-Mart Watch Executive Director David Nassar. “This will be a good time for America to catch its breath and start to have a conversation about whether the low-wage, low-benefit Wal-Mart model is really the type of economic growth the country needs.”
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