Benn Ray, owner of Hampden’s Atomic Books, couldn’t get over the language in the Baltimore Sun’s Friday Wal-Mart story, their first on the fact that a north Baltimore development proposal now includes a Wal-Mart, as well as a Lowe’s.
“A second Walmart store will open in Baltimore by the fall of 2011…” was the lede sentence.
“Why does it say ‘WILL open?’ The whole thing is being couched as a done deal, but they need to get a PUD,” Ray pointed out, correctly noting that, in order to be built, the mixed-use development would need to be green-lighted by the City Council as a ”planned unit development.”
“It’s unbelievable,” said Ray. “The government and the media are just accepting this is going to happen.”
Indeed, within hours after the Wal-Mart news broke, Baltimore government, community and media types were staking out their positions, overtly or implicitly, on this hot button issue.
Ray, who is also the president of the Hampden Merchants’ Association and famously fought off chain stores in funky-themed Hampden a few years ago, quickly signed an online petition for people opposed to the Wal-mart.
“We don’t want this in north Baltimore,” said Ray, whose neighborhood is close to Remington, where Wal-Mart wants to open the store.
Community walking tour in December with developer of proposed Remington project. Photo by John Dean.
Ray said that area supermarkets, drug stores and many independently owned or operated businesses will be “killed” by competition from Wal-Mart’s deeply-discounted pharmacy, food, clothing and other merchandise.
He said that the Lowe’s home improvement store (which the developer described as an anchor store last fall) would knock off seven or eight small family-owned or operated hardware stores, like Falkenhan’s.
What about Wal-Mart’s claim that the store would create 250 jobs? “Of course they’re pushing this as a jobs thing,” he said, “but people should think about the fact that they are low-paying, part-time service jobs.”
How about the idea that people might like Wal-Mart’s low prices? They would lose out in other ways, he argued, after the social costs of those lower-quality jobs and the crippled local economy take their toll.
“It’s interesting that this isn’t happening in Roland Park or Canton — it’s happening in Remington,” he added. “They’re taking advantage of the fact that Remington is a distressed area that they can exploit.”
Choosing sides
It didn’t take long last week for others to present the news and stake out their positions.
– The Daily Record, which broke the story on Wednesday, also used fait-accompli language, not in its story, but in its headline: ” Wal-Mart store to open,” it read. (Same way with the Baltimore Business Journal piece. City Paper, in its lede, correctly referred to the project as “proposed.”)
– Bloggers and news websites posted short items on it, too. (When Brew contributor Gerald Neily posted, it was not to discuss the news about Wal-Mart but to analyze the changes the architect has made to the layout of the project since it was first unveiled.) Benn Ray, in addition to drawing up the petition , got off a couple of posts about Wal-Mart on his blog, Mobtown Shank .
“There already are 18 Wal-Marts within a 20 mile radius of this proposed site,” he wrote. ”Do we really need a 19th?”
– When the Sun weighed in on Friday, they not only cast the coming of the store as a done deal, but framed the company’s public relations problems as, well, a thing of the past.
“Neighbors had a mixed reaction to Walmart, once derided for its treatment of employees and a market dominance that crowded out smaller retailers.” (Don’t those neighbors know that is so ten minutes ago?!)
– Sun business columnist Jay Hancock gave the big-box merchandiser a thumbs-up. “Benefits of the low prices Walmart brings to Baltimore will outweigh the negatives of low wages,” Hancock wrote. “Some liberals bash Walmart as the enemy of lower- and middle-income folks when in fact its low prices deliver huge benefits to working families.”)
– And, of course, there was nothing but love from the president of the city’s quasi-governmental development entity, the Baltimore Development Corporation.
M J. “Jay” Brodie told the Sun that interest from Wal-Mart and Lowe’s is “a welcome sign that major contemporary retailers see Baltimore City as a viable market.”
– With one tiny Tweet, meanwhile, The Urbanite magazine deftly conveyed a complex double message to its hip Baltimore readership: “Welcome our new Wal-Mart overlords in Remington: They best Whole Foods in the Atlantic mag’s recent foodie face-off.”
The Atlantic article they linked to argues that Wal-Mart, not Whole Foods, might “actually save the family farm and make America more healthy.” ( Message: we’re cool enough to share your hostile feelings toward Wal-Mart , even as we clue you to this new positive spin on them.)
– As for the Wal-Mart spokeswoman, Rhoda Washington, her quotes to the Record and others emphasized not only the jobs a Wal-mart would bring, but that it would be “consistent with where Baltimore is headed as far as the green movement.”
– Even the Sun’s Jacques Kelly opined on the Wal-Mart news, giving the multi-national, big-box chain not a greenwash, but a sepia treatment. Their arrival in north Baltimore “follows a long tradition of merchants who cater to the city’s memorably thrifty shoppers,” he wrote, likening Wal-Mart to two of his beloved long-gone downtown retailers, Gutman’s and Brager’s.
“There is a good side to all this,” he concluded. “We remain unpretentious here and like it that way.”
24th Street looking north at proposed Remington Lowes and Wal-Mart.
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