The Impact of Big Box Grocers on Southern California: Jobs, Wages and Municipal Finances

This report, prepared for the Orange County Business Council by professors at UCLA and UC Irvine, examines the impacts - both positive and negative - of supercenters on local economies. From the introduction:

"The following research analysis, The Impact of Big Box Grocers on Southern California: Jobs, Wages, and Municipal Finances, was prepared for the Orange County Business Council by Professors Marlon Boarnet (University of California, Irvine) and Randall Crane (University of California, Los Angeles). The authors publish broadly in the areas of local economic development, land use, and municipal fiscal policy. The Orange County Business Council also has a longstanding interest in both the fiscal impacts of local land use issues and the economic impacts of government decision-making and changing business climates in California.

In this report they examine the enormous, and ever-growing retail grocery business, and the many changes occurring in this industry. One of the most important  developments is the combination of big-box discount retail and grocery sales into a single store known as a supercenter. While K-Mart and others have experimented with retail grocery sales in recent years, Wal-Mart has quietly become the second largest grocer in the country by adding large grocery stores to their retail stores to form massive retail “supercenters”, often as large as 220,000 square feet.

This study is designed as an aid to public decision-making regarding such projects, which have negative as well as positive impacts. Neither are always well understood, or carefully considered, in the municipal race for sales tax revenue. However, this report clearly shows that the fiscal benefits of supercenters, and of discount retail more generally, are much more complex, and often lower, than they first appear."

Click here to download "The Impact of Big Box Grocers on Southern California: Jobs, Wages and Municipal Finances."