Walmart: High Cost of Low Price
http://www.freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=105

The Madison WalMart, located on the typically affluent far west side of Madison, a squatter smack in the heart of Limousine LIberal territory, was a pit of chaos and mismanagement. I attempted to shop there once, and never repeated the experience. The Beloit WalMart, in a much more conservative small city, was by comparison an oasis of retail diversity and order, and employed older workers not only grateful to have a part time job, but with plenty of expertise and pride in their areas. I particularly remember being walked through a history of the blues in the CD aisle by a delightful older boomer having a ball with his retirement job. Beloitians loved their WalMart, but missed it’s predecessor, the K-mart. Moms and Pops still managed to eke out a living, somehow. The Panama City Beach WalMart is simply unspeakable, (don’t ever go there on Hallowe’en; it’s so redudant!) but now the new one planned for nearby Destin (think Redneck Rodeo Drive) is drawing fire. Which only shows that even rednecks have become pretentious…

As a twenty year veteran resident of Baltimore’s inner city I’ll bet the 25th St. WalMart takes on plenty of eccentricity merely by virtue of it’s location. And I’ll bet if you ask Station North proponents their real reaction to this planned use, those with a lick of sense will see it as a good thing. There’s plenty of room for Mom, Pop and Uncle Wally in Baltimore’s delightfully eccentric retail topography. WalMart’s food vendors are not going to be getting liquor licences and competing with The Diz or Sterling Oyster House any time soon…

Our civic model ought to be twenty blocks of Manhattan, not Mayberry. WalMart has gone green, organic and is giving domestic partner benefits. I hope it gives Whole Paycheck as well as Safeway and all the other “Mom and Pops” it’s competing with absolute fits. Maybe they’ll even bring back the BLUE LIGHT SPECIAL! (Now that would really reflect a sense of place.) IMHO!

Interesting article comparing Walmart and Whole Foods in the Atlantic

In the long term, I hear those arguing for more walker\biker friendly development. Sounds good.

Another benefit these people don’t want to point out is that this will provide hundred of jobs to people in the area, its not like most people who actually live here in Hampden have any luck at all of being employed on the avenue. The fact is most of the people bitching are not from the neighborhood & most of them do not actually have Hampdens interest at heart!

As for traffic, I live on falls road & because of the stores on the avenue most people decide to park on my street for free parking or because its close to the block, so most of the time I end up needing to park all the way down my street about .6-.8 miles down the street! So get used to it, I mean I had to because of the avenue & I only live here!!!!!!! I’m tired of going on my avenue to see these shops that normal Hampden locals wont ever be able to shop at besides the bars & such! So yay we finally get something realistic. I love how our bakery of 100 + years old ended up being forced off our avenue. Or the person who purchased the old, old bar called the hampden house just so they could get the liquor licence.

If you want to raise hell, you should have raised hell about stuff like that, but that don’t matter to those people. Its only my neighborhoods heritage!!!!

here are my answers to your quesitons:

1. small business doesn’t over charge. they have to pay much higher distribution costs than large retailers so the cost per-unit is much more expensive for them, since they aren’t buying in massive bulk, like a lowes or walmart does. also, they also normally pay their works a fair wage, unlike wal-mart, so their costs are higher there as well. so, that would be why the writer depicts small business owners as victims to big business.

2. THE COMMUNITY should be THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR in any urban planning porject! not the short term “hey i can get cheap towels here.” your novel idea of buying land is like saying if you hate health care buy the hospital. land is insanely expensive and getting a commercial loan is very difficult in today economy. as for the developer,

3. its not a vocal minority. i think most of the educated public would not want a store like this in their neighborhood. stores like homogenize and kill local, self owned small business. this would be like putting tape on a slit open stomach. the neighborhood needs actual retail and commerce. it needs a community center and park. it needs stores that will increase foot traffic not traffic. it needs real jobs and careers, not the shadow of a job that leaves people in poverty without any chance of growth.

I think this point is very important–and I’m not sure how Greg meant it, but it could go either way. Communities have control over land use. We don’t have control over who builds what as long as it conforms to our land use policies. If we allow for a PUD to go through it should conform to communally accepted land uses.

From my point of view both Giant and Safeway aren’t so great with their lack of street facing, massive universally unfull parking, and lack of conformity with the the surroundings. I think the planned development in Remington is just taking it one step farther. I don’t want suburban land uses in the city. That’s my major complaint.

Although Wal-mart was toting “New Jobs!” they actually brought zero new jobs to the area. The article discussed the loss of Mom & Pop stores and jobs vs. New Wal-mart jobs. The study said it was “a wash”.

I suggest we start a Keep Baltimore Weird Campaign, like Austin did!

1. Why does the article paint the retailers who overcharge an underserved population with reduced access to transportation as the victims? Shouldnt there be an article titled “National Store to finally provide competitive prices in the area?”

2. While I am sure developers want to have the community on board, since when is the community their partner with the ability to make decisions? If the project fails, is everyone in the community going to chip in $1000 to get the developer out of bankruptcy? How about this novel idea: if you want to control something that happens on a peice of land, buy the land.

3. It seems like there is typically a vocal extreme minority in many cases like this. I have no idea how deep the resentment is, but often the “opposition” is nothing more than 1 – 10 people with a printer and an email list.

I think the first comment is right… perhaps the community would be better served by a huge vacant lot with used needles all over it for the kids to play on. I wish people would see this for what it is and that is an abuse of zoning or building regulations to serve a completely unrelated (and unintended) business agenda.