Update on my fight against Wal-mart

[aQuArius]

I posted a while ago that my childhood home city wanted to build a Wal-mart and Lowe's just blocks from my childhood home, my mom still owns. I went home over Thanksgiving and fought against the big boxes to no avail. This political cartoon pretty much sums it up.
http://166.70.46.216/bagley/Archive.asp?Vol=content&Num=3

[Aiptasia]

1. I'm right there with you

I'm trying to boycott all big chain stores for life.

[The Zanti Regent]

8. Dump Whore Mart, go Costco!

Costco treats its' employees like human beings!

http://www.costco.com/

[mark414]

2. it's a tough fight

i know the feeling...i fought against a wal-mart supercenter in my (small town) hometown here in wisconsin...to no avail

the mayor and the aldermen are pretty much the richest guys in down, a real buddy buddy system, and they just let the thing sail through even though most of the town didn't even want it. can't wait for 2006 when some of them come up for re-election...

[barb162]

24. you know, if people just wouldn't shop there.. wouldn't it be

hilarious and RIGHT if the people in an area just let the damn place go empty, simply not patronize the place and they would have to close the store.

[barb162]

25. dup, sorry

[blondeatlast]

3. I've got several anti-WM links, do you want them?

I'll pull my own teeth if it would stop a Wal-Mart.

[warrens]

6. Their business model is stopping them

That is why they are fighting so hard to build. They have a grow or die model, and frankly, they have grown as much as they can. It might take another two or three years for the body to react to the bullet to the head. Price is not the only reason people shop, and Wal-Mart is so associated with low prices that it can't react to changes in the market. Americans now are buying a lot less, but they want more quality. On the low end, dollar stores are killing WM, and Best Buy and Crate and Barrel and Costco and Target are killing them on the upper end.

I am crying here. Not.

[Poppyseedman]

7. Your wish will come true

"That is why they are fighting so hard to build"

I am in very close relationship to Wally World and can tell you internally they are moving from big super centers to small 28,000 sq ft stores as fast as possible. They only are building sites that already are on their radar. Within a few years they won't build any at all.

These folks are very smart and know the demographics of the American shopper very well.

Wally World never buys the land, it is leased for 20 years max.

They know the big stores are going to be dinosaurs in 10 years.

[blondeatlast]

17. Interesting; what about small towns?

What they did to my home town is my biggest beef with them, among many others. I'd like to see that store close, but I wonder is there any hope for such a little town post Brawl-Mart?

[barb162]

20. can you explain the last sentence? I am not at all clear

what you mean...the wallie stores around here have zillions of shoppers

[Poppyseedman]

22. Wally world

still has plenty of shoppers, but as the baby boomer's move into their 60's and 70's and their kids move out, Wally World knows their stores will be too big and simply not convenient place to shop.

You will see many smaller stores like the old neighborhood store with a deli, produce, butcher, all the things the super centers have, but only scaled down.

Those huge stores take massive volume to operate profitably,that type volume cannot be sustained forever as retailers follow their model (like Sears, Kmart merger) and slowly grab market share.

When you hear analysis take about Wally world, they always talk in the same store comparison, because most of their growth is though new stores.

Some stores do a couple of million a week in volume. A 2% increase on 2 million is $40,000 in sales. Growth like that is unrealistic in the long term. Their average shopper spends somewhere in the range of $35 to $60 a trip. At $40 a shopper, thats 1,000 more customers you need to bring in weekly.

They know that is not going to happen, so they build 3 small stores within the 5 mile radius of the big store and at some time in the future will close the big one after the other stores have been established.

Three additional stores in the area locks out competition, so when you close the big one, They STILL RULE.

[barb162]

9. "Wal-Mart is so associated with low prices " and often they don't

have the lowest prices. Same with Sam's. My friend just bought a turkey at Sam's for 1.50 a pound while the regular grocery stores around here were selling them for far under a dollar a pound. Same thing with soda and a host of other items. Walmart shoppers are like lemmings, they just assume the prices are lower than elsewhere. I don't understand these Walmart shoppers because they will say they are shopping price and then they don't seem to be checking prices at other retailers.

[Nobody]

15. I did a secret shopper stint

at several Wal-Marts and at Target, looking to compare prices for ammo in my fight against Wallyworld. This was engendered by a friend mentioning a TV news program he couldn't recall the name of (I'd have liked to have seen it) where someone was kicked out of Wallyworld for noting down prices.

I was hoping I'd be kicked out for that, but this didn't happen despite my being extra blatant about it and going with a friend who was also being extra blatant.

Wallyworld doesn't have the lowest prices, though the five Wal Marts I set foot in and spent no money at were consistent within 5 cents of each other. I was looking for evidence of price gouging by checking locations in the burbs, the inner city, a new place that opened up, a place near nothing else, and a place in the middle of everything. And Target.

I had my bumper sticker specially affixed for this pricing trip: Unions: The People Who Brought You The Weekend

[barb162]

21. There's a KMart around here that puts the Walie price

next to their own price, but still people go to Wallie's here in far greater numbers. The Kmart is almost always empty. PS I think Kmart is not good to its employees also

[blondeatlast]

10. Well, pass me that tissue box. NOT!

This is great news. Even before I knew about their horrendous business and labor practices, I HATED the place. Then they built a store in my old hometown, directly across from some ancient and well preserved Indian ruins--and I mean DIRECTLY across.

That's when I got active, and as I saw the decline of the downtown, it made my resolve even stronger.

[Nobody]

4. We fought one too and lost

And what pisses me off the most is that we were all feeling a lot like Arthur Dent in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when, at the beginning of the book, was told that hishouse was about to be bulldozed and that he should have known because the plans were on public display. In the basement at City Hall.

As soon as we got wind of the Wal Mart, one citizen wrote an editorial in the community weekly newspaper. It got tons of responses and we met at a neighborhood restaurant in their party room. We packed the place and we ALL BOUGHT FOOD there. It was not a sit down restaurant, so we brought in tons of business and didn't overtax their staffing.

Once everyone was there, the meeting began. People were thrilled to be doing something about Wal Mart and lots of people had great ideas and were eagerly volunteering to do them.

Then, the manager of the restaurant kicked us out for being too noisy (we weren't), for taking up too many places in the parking lot, and for driving away customers. (we bought food there, and how could we be driving away customers when we were in a separate room with a closed door? She claimed that someone had called her at home. I suspect a different reason motivated her entirely. Keep reading...

We hung around in the parking lot passing out the rest of the volunteer activities and then we left.

The next time our community weekly came out, the manager of the restaurant wrote a scathing indictment of our cause, stating that she was very much pro-Wal Mart. As were every other small business in the area. (Bullshit. Small business owners were at the meeting backing us up)

The weekly also published editorials from their own staff from a very pro-Wal Mart stance, claiming that we were late to the table, the deal was done, and there was nothing we could do about it. After all the plans were announced..... (Remember Arthur Dent? We got as much notice as he did)

Anyway, we lost hard. There's going to be a Wal Mart too damn close to where I live. When that place is built, I plan to infiltrate the Wal Mart, and pepper the place with "Workers, Know Your Rights" flyers.

If anyone has any resources for me to check out, I'd be grateful.

[blondeatlast]

12. I've got a few good ones, here:

Looks like Wal-Martyrs is gone, which is too bad, it had some great links.

http://www.cluw.org/wal-mart.html

http://www.walmartwatch.com/info/page.cfm?subsection_id=124
This is a great clearinghouse (pardon the pun!) for all things anti-Brawl-Mart.

http://casadelogo.typepad.com/factesque/2004/05/walmarts_insidi.html

http://www.dsausa.org/lowwage/walmart/why_walmart.html

http://www.retailworker.com/

http://forum.walmartsucks.com/index.php?sid=5127eabefa6a7f364909a7e8f0b6865a

[Nobody]

13. Thank you! Will begin compiling info n/t

[Historic NY]

5. Here is a site to check out, very successful.

http://www.sprawl-busters.com/

[nmvisitor]

11. We fought one - and won

My neighborhood association recently completed a fight against WalMart. We won, but I don't think how we won will be of much help to others. Here was our situation:

1) A developer owned quite a bit of undeveloped property in our subdivision. It was zoned for retail but was subject to restrictive covenents, and the local homeowners association was a party to those covenents.

2) The developer wanted to sell a couple of parcels to someone to build a burger joint and a gas station. On the face of it, this appeared to be disallowed by the covenents. The developer and our group began negotiatations.

3) We decided on a trade: we gave our blessing for the gas station and fast food place in return for much stricter restrictions on the remaining undeveloped property. One key new restriction was that no single retail building could exceed 65,000 square feet. There were also a lot of other restrictions added about lighting, building height, etc. The developer agreed to this, apparently because he was already talking to someone about building a grocery store on the site, and the new potential owners had no problems with these restrictions. The new restrictive covenents were drawn up and recorded properly with the city and county, and tied to the property to be passed on to successive owners.

4) Several years passed. The grocery store deal fell through. The land sat vacant, and the developer evidently began to regret his agreement with us.

5) Next we heard was that the developer was going to sell the property to WalMart, and that a 225,000 square foot supercenter was going in. We sued, the developer counter-sued, and things got very ugly.

6) The developer claimed he was coerced into signing the original agreement, and that members of our group had improper contacts with city hall. Our group was villified in the local paper, and by most local politicians. Our group leaders in particular were dragged through the mud.

7) The legal wrangling went on for a couple of years. The normal complaints about WalMart got us nowhere. Yes, they are big and nasty, and cause traffic problems, and hurt local businesses, yada yada yada. All that is true, but it didn't help us a bit. We had one thing going for us - the 65,000 sq ft size restriction. That's what the opposing lawyers went after, and that's what we had to defend; over and over and over. They tried to wear us out and bankrupt us.

8) In the end, we won. After numerous legal battles, a judge finally decreed that the restrictive covenants were valid and could be enforced. He also ruled that the developer had to pay most of our legal costs. We haven't seen any of that money yet, but I think we will.

9) The reason I don't think our case will help others in their battles against WalMart is because most people are not going to have a pre-existing restrictive covenant. If we had not had that 65,000 size restriction in place, we would have lost - no doubt about it. In fact, the developer could decide to sell the property to WalMart anyway. If WalMart bought the land and decided to build one of those smaller neighborhood types of store that is smaller than 65,000 sq feet, we could not prevent it.

10) We had a big celebratory dinner, and patted ourselves on the back. WalMart may not lose often, but they do lose every once in a while.

[Nobody]

16. Congratulations! A huge pat on the back from me!

Wal Mart is one of those companies that would rather spend 5 million dollars in legal fees than give their own workers a raise that would cost them less than that in actual dollars and benefit them in many intangible ways that can't be easily converted to dollars.

Your legal battle sounds like the kind of corporate thinking that considers it good to spend a million dollars fighting a five humdred dollar fine.

Did you know that at least 1 out of every 3 Wal Marts is fought against by the communities that Wal Mart has its eye on?

[lolly]

18. Their modus operandi

Actually, your experience sounds like a lot of others I've heard about with Wal-Mart (except for your wise thinking in getting covenant restrictions).

Wal-Mart typically hides its face during opening negotiations for a lot; the developer sells nearby residents on some small, up-scale or otherwise "desirable" retail establishment that he knows the residents will want (a small grocery in an area that doesn't have easy access to supermarkets, for example).

Then, after all the permits come through and everything is set, the developer's supposed "deal" with the desirable business falls through somehow, but--looky here, what luck--Wal-Mart is willing to step in and take it off our hands for us.

By then the town has approved zoning for retail and it's too late for residents to protest.

[GOPisEvil]

14. Hi aQuAruis!

It's really good to see you. :hi:

Sorry about the big boxes. :-(

[rockymountaindem]

19. The citizens of Monument, Colorado also defeated one.

Monument is a small town of about 3,000 people (officially, although it is contiguous with various exburbs of Colorado Springs), who defeated a Wal-Mart with a direct referendum. As it turns out, Wal-Mart could have built completely legally and without challenge about 1/2 a mile down the road from where they tried to build. However, Wal-Mart insisted on trying to build where it would obstruct entry into some small restaurants and shops, or something like that.

Nobody knew what to do about the zoning, so they put it to a public vote, and Wal-Mart was defeated, not to return. This means that the people of Monument will have to drive from exit 160 to exit 151 on Interstate 25 in order to shop at the Wal-Mart next to the IHOP on Highway 83 (can't ya tell I live in the suburbs :) ).

What interests me the most is that the town of Monument is something like 89% Republican. I guess their support of big business can only be counted on when the mega corporations are trying to ruing someone else's town. Typical.

[Robb]

23. Gunnison is in the midst of this right now, too...

I've been following some of it on the Gunnison County Times site. :)

[Cuban_Liberal]

26. We fought and won.

Wally World wanted to build here, but they needed some property rezoned, to do it. The Zoning Board held a hearing where about 300 poeple showed up to oppose WM's application, so they voted to deny it. The Village Board ratified their decision.

You can still go buy your groceries in and independent grocery store here, get your pills and potions from an independent pharmacy, etc. . Feels good.

:)