Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Walmart, Target, Best Buy & Other Big Box Retailers Embrace Sales on Smaller Scale | Moneyland | TIME.com

ABOVE: Meijer artist rendering; retail as far as the eye can see .... 

As Franklin faces the impending addition of a gigantic Meijer big box, dismantling the Crossroads Regulating Plan in the process, the rest of the commercial world sees the benefit of ... smaller: 

While the big-box retail model is far from dead, stores such as Walmart, Best Buy, and Cabela’s are realizing that the enormous, one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for all shoppers—nor all locations. To grow, many retailers are shrinking, sometimes with smaller stores, sometimes by introducing smaller, more intimate and approachable locations within larger stores.

Read the rest at: Walmart, Target, Best Buy & Other Big Box Retailers Embrace Sales on Smaller Scale | Moneyland | TIME.com

Another community taken for a ride by Wal-Mart, part 2: Adding insult to (uninsured) injury

South Milwaukee, look what YOU -- and the State of Wisconsin's Medicaid program --  just bought:

After trying to mollify its critics in recent years by offering better health care benefits to its employees, Wal-Mart is substantially rolling back coverage for part-time workers and significantly raising premiums for many full-time staff.

Oh, and Wisconsin's clueless governor is trying to CUT Medicare as we speak. The perfect storm.

Honestly, South Milwaukee - you didn't see this coming?

Read the rest at: Wal-Mart Cuts Some Health Care Benefits - NYTimes.com

Another community taken for a ride by Wal-Mart

Is the death-spiral of the Middle Class still mysterious to people when municipalities PAY to have cash-larded retailers come in to help shutter any and all local businesses?

Wal-Mart throttles South Milwaukee:

The city will spend $800,000 to clean up environmental contamination on the city-owned parcel. The city also will spend up to $1 million on cleanup work on an adjacent 6.5-acre parcel owned by an investment group, led by Briohn Building Corp., that Gatlin is buying.

The city's project costs could total $3.05 million. That amount includes $1.75 million previously spent to acquire and do earlier demolition and cleanup work on its 3.5-acre parcel, minus $500,000 Gatlin will pay South Milwaukee to buy that land.

The Walmart will generate $276,000 in estimated annual property taxes, which will be used to pay off the city's costs, including interest. Once that debt is paid off, the property taxes go to the city, its school district and other local governments.

Do the math. So much for sustainable communities.

Very, very sad.

"A huge national company conducts a dirty tricks campaign for its own goals, and a city and a developer become collateral damage," complains.... WAL-MART?!?!?!

You have to read it to believe it.

The Wall Street Journal -- a paper that feels comfortable cutting checks to Karl Rove for his forgot-we-messed-up-the-economy ramblings, and champions the concept of "corporate personhood" when it comes to campaign finance -- published today an "expose" revealing that -- GASP! -- smaller grocers might be hiring professional help to keep Wal-Mart's job-killing, wage-lowering supercenters out of their market.

Shocking!

The story comes complete with photo of tie-wearing bad guy (consultant who fights developments) and shirt-collar "good guy" (the poor, victimized developer).

Wal-Mart has stepped up recently in terms of sustainable practices and should be recognized for that (better late than never). However, even the most hardened Wal-Mart apologist has to wince at the crocodile tears shed by the WSJ for the poor megacorporation, which virtually wrote the book on dirty tricks and shameless astroturf campaigns.

Shameless as well is this fantasy-based assertion from an Illinois city official:

City Administrator John Labaido says the village and school district have lost an estimated $6 million a year in sales and property-tax revenue.

His city must be that rare place where Wal-Mart does not demand -- and get -- many more millions than that in subsidies and infrastructure spending in their vicinity. 

The march to part-time, zero benefits begins for employees of the vanquished

See what's coming?

That whole sick-leave idea is gonna look pretty good in the near future....

Wal-Mart renovating three stores for bigger grocery departments - JSOnline.

Franklin aldermen to take Loyalty Oath tonight: Fear of the electorate prompts "me too" ordinance

On tonight's Common Council agenda, an item reads:

G. Reports and Recommendations
 1. Ordinance to Create Chapter 191 of the Municipal Code Relating to the Non-Regulation
  of Employee Wages or Benefits for Private Businesses (Ald. Olson).

Were it a more honest or prosaic document, the agenda item would more accurately read as follows:

G. Reports and Recommendations
 1. Extraction of Business Loyalty Oaths, election brochure bullet point creation, prevention of unified action by a populous whose potential judgment and actions are feared (Ald. Olson).

To pluck from the array of folksy platitudes that regularly emanate from Alderman Steve Olson: This is "a solution looking for a problem" (I harvested that one from the 2/3/09 Common Council discussion on dog leashes).

It is also clearly an indication that Alderman Olson - who has shrewdly designed the unneeded ordinance so a vote against it seems to be a vote against business -  appears to fear the will of the electorate.

Let's pretend that this ordinance (see below) actually had something to do with paid sick leave.

FACT: There is no Sick Pay law or rule pending in or suggested for Franklin.

FACT: The City of Milwaukee's Sick Pay Law has been suspended by the courts and faces review.

FACT: If a Sick Pay law actually "threatened" to be imposed on Franklin, the Common Council could enact a blocking ordinance in a matter of hours.

FACT: The Franklin electorate has not shown itself to be predisposed toward generating a Paid Sick Leave ordinance, and the needs of the working population of Franklin are different than that of an urban core that very much needs a sick leave law of some sort.

Now, consider this:

Number of times Alderman Olson's proposed ordinance mentions the phrase "paid sick leave": ZERO

Number of times Alderman Olson's proposed ordinance mentions the word "sick": ZERO

This is not an ordinance that surgically prevents Paid Sick Leave. However, the ordinance does eliminate the ability of the electorate to effect direct legislation as it applies to employee wages and benefits.

In other words, the Franklin Common Council is going to enact an ordinance that takes away the power of direct legislation from the people of Franklin - - the ability to petition for reform as needed and requested by the people of the city - - under the guise of simply "preventing paid sick leave."

(This fact has not gone unnoticed by blogger Fred Keller.)

Think of it: As we face the most seismic economic event of our lifetimes; as blue- and white-color workers alike begin to flood the unemployment pool; as uncertainty looms large in the months and years ahead: Alderman Olson is saying NONREGULATION is our only hope, and we need to take away the right of the people to petition directly for reform as the situation unfolds.

Ludicrous. But the ordinance will pass because Olson is savvy enough to position this as a Loyalty Oath for members of the Common Council. He has briefed his public relations blogger (who has apparently not even read the ordinance but managed to dutifully pass along a veiled threat nonetheless: "If an alderman or two vote against this pro-business, pro-jobs measure, it will be very telling"), and rest assured Alderman Olson already has draft language of his "pro-business stand" in his re-election brochure. He will vilify any aldermen who dare see this ordinance for what it is and properly move to set it aside or vote against it.

I predict that no alderman will vote against it. I could speak against the ordinance and vote against recommending it as an Economic Development Commissioner because my position there is not an elective office; I have much more latitude than an alderman. Barring a miracle, this will pass tonight, easily.

So, what's in this ordinance for us? The loss of one of our basic rights as citizens as we enter "interesting times." What's in it for certain members of the Common Council? Re-election fodder.

One company that will be very pleased and will once again contribute to the re-election efforts of those aldermen who toe the line will be Wal-Mart.

Because of paid sick leave? No - were it only so simple. With their enormous cash reserves and monolithic leverage against suppliers, Wal-Mart may well emerge the "last man standing" in retail and grocery for a period of time as businesses fold and pull back. They will be looking at an enormous pool of former full-time workers looking for new full-time work, and when you have 50 people applying for five full-time positions, you can do things like eliminate ALL full-time positions and convert everyone to part-time.

Think they won't do it? Guess again.

And what will the citizens of Franklin - - who can rightly assert that waivers, subsidies, and other benefits granted by the city to Wal-Mart should be repaid in the form of at least a few full-time jobs - -  be able to do about that situation if this ordinance passes?

Nothing. That right is stripped from the populous by this ordinance.

Because someone fears the potential will of the people.

Below, the ordinance minus the "whereas's":

Proposed ORDINANCE NO. 2009-_____

AN ORDINANCE TO CREATE CHAPTER 191 OF THE MUNICIPAL CODE RELATING TO THE NON-REGULATION OF EMPLOYEE WAGES OR BENEFITS FOR PRIVATE BUSINESSES

SECTION 1:     Chapter 191 of the Municipal Code of the City of Franklin, Wisconsin, is hereby created to read as follows:

“Chapter 191 PRIVATE BUSINESS EMPLOYEE WAGE AND BENEFIT NON-REGULATION

§191-1.  Limitation of municipal regulation.
No ordinance of the City of Franklin or any other municipal ordinance, rule, or regulation shall require that any private employer provide particular wages or benefits to its employees or set forth the amount or type of any employee wage or benefit provided an employee working within the City or doing business with the City, except as may be required by another governmental agency funded project, such as the Community Development Block Grant program or the like, or by way of State or Federal statute or administrative code or rule.  ”

SECTION 2:     The terms and provisions of this ordinance are severable.  Should any term or provision of this ordinance be found to be invalid by a court of competent jurisdiction, the remaining terms and provisions shall remain in full force and effect.

SECTION 3:    All ordinances and parts of ordinances in contravention to this ordinance are hereby repealed.

SECTION 4:    This ordinance shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage and publication.

Wal-Mart finally caves in to Santa Claus

'Twas the settlement before Christmas.

Al Norman: Wal-Mart Santa Settles 63 Wage & Hour Lawsuits.

Wal-Mart's thrifty charity work vs. genuine community outreach

Here's something interesting I learned in the book Deep Economy: The three heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune are among the ten richest people on the earth, worth $90 billion. According to Fortune magazine, the city of Bentonville, Arkansas, where their family began to make their fortunes, home of Wal-Mart, runs a budget deficit and can't afford a new sewage treatment plant.

I guess it should be no surprise, then, to read (via Fred Keller's BULLSEYE blog) that Franklin's Wal-Mart and Sam's Club combined to donate a whopping $8,000 $5,000 to various Franklin institutions and charities. {Sharp-eyed reader Scott Thinnes called my attention to some awkward language in the NOW story below; I actually erroniously added the TOTAL of two grants to the two amounts that comprised it.)

From FranklinNOW.com:

On Friday, December 5th, 2008, the City of Franklin received a donation of $3,000 from Sam's Club/Walmart. A grant of $2,000 to the Franklin Public Library towards replacement of the children's computers in the children's library area was received by Barbara Roark, Franklin Public Library Director.

A second grant of $1,000 was received by City of Franklin Police Chief, Rick Oliva, who stated that the grant would be used for public programs such as National Night Out and Bicycle Safety programs.

Sam's Club/Walmart finished the grants presentation at the Franklin Sam's Club location with a $2,000 grant to the Salvation Army to be used for holiday donations to over 400 families.

As I noted in the BULLSEYE comment section: Color me unimpressed. $5,000? Not great, I'm afraid. Wal-Mart can find 8k under their fingernails at the end of a day. You do better if you're a politician with a blog: Wal-Mart gave Mary Lazich $1,000, and got for their money, among other favors, an ostensibly Lazich-authored blog entitled "Wal-Mart to the Rescue"(!)

Bottom line: 5k is certainly not compensation for the corporate socialism Wal-Mart extracts from the local and federal government.

And, to my friend Bryan Maersch (now blogging here) who commented: ""Right or Wrong, Walmart is a big part of our economy," I have to say just this:

Right or wrong? I don't care how "big" you are; I believe we should expect RIGHT in all cases.

Let's contrast Wal-Mart's, er, thriftyness with the generosity of Dave Hahn of the Greenfield Outback Steak House. He was honored last night by the Greenfield Chamber of Commerce as Business of the Year.

This is what Mr. Hahn does: Each year, he chooses ten charities and community groups to host a fundraiser. The fundraiser costs are set by the charity or organization, and what they collect they get to keep, free and clear. This year's beneficiaries were Greenfield Friends of Music, Greenfield Education Association, Wisconsin String Teachers, Downs Syndrome Association, National Campaign for Muscular Dystrophy/Friedrich Ataxia, and local churches.

Outback Steak House is a chain, but Dave Hahn is a local franchisee who recognizes his community's needs and takes positive, ongoing, focused action. His kind of giving takes an appreciable bite from his personal bottom line, but creates the kind of goodwill that gets people like me (and everyone I talk to for the next month or so) over to his restaurant for a dinner or two, or three.

As for Wal-Mart; they'll do fine without me.

Cudahy rejects Wal-Mart Supercenter proposal - JSOnline

No more rubber stamps for the retail giant?

Cudahy rejects Wal-Mart Supercenter proposal - JSOnline:

By Tom Daykin of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: Dec. 3, 2008 11:08 a.m.

A Wal-Mart Supercenter proposed for Cudahy ran into a big roadblock Tuesday night when the Common Council voted against approving the framework for the project's development agreement.

Council members rejected a proposed "memorandum of understanding" between the city and developer Continental Properties Co.

Approving the memorandum would pave the way for a more detailed development agreement with Continental, which wants to build the Cudahy Station retail development on 26 acres, south of E. Layton Ave., between S. Nicholson Ave. and Sweet Applewood Lane. The development would be anchored by the 134,000-square-foot Supercenter, a combined supermarket and discount store.

The project isn't necessarily dead as a result of the vote. But, as the delays pile up, "the less likely it is to happen," said Steve Wagner, Continental's vice president for retail leasing.

"We're evaluating all of our options," Wagner said today. A Wal-Mart executive couldn't be immediately reached for comment.

Ald. Mary Schissel said she voted against the memorandum because her constituents told her they didn't want a Wal-Mart, partly due to objections they had over the retailer's wages.

"They didn't see it as an improvement," she said.

Continental's original plan included development of an indoor soccer training academy operated by the Milwaukee Wave soccer team. But plans for the soccer facility have been delayed, with Continental seeking to begin construction next summer on the Supercenter.

The project site is home to the failed Iceport indoor skating complex.

Consumerist Insiders: Is Walmart Price-Gouging Hurricane Victims?

As someone who dealt with a flooding event back in June, I know all too well what it means to have to quickly purchase items needed for day-to-day existence. You don't have time to shop around (I even bought ethernet wire at Best Buy, which is insane, pricewise) and you are very much at the mercy of decisions made by suppliers and retailers. Fortunately - - except for a run on dehumidifiers - - our local area was not so uniformly hit that shortages or gouging occurred.

Not so in larger weather events, unfortunately. The story below notes that Wal-Mart's sudden price hike on cellphone chargers may have been a coincidence, but anyone who has studied Wal-Mart's sophisticated "just in time" pricing and inventory system knows that nothing happens there by chance. They know how many boxes of Cheerios are on a shelf at store number 2354 in Peoria right this second.

Raise the price to avert shortages? It wasn't long ago that Wal-Mart apologists were back-slapping the retailer for utilizing their sophisticated inventory and stocking system to be pin-point prepared for Katrina. The Wall Street Journal gushed:

Wal-Mart mined its vast databases of past purchases to compile lists of goods most desired after a hurricane. (Among the top items? Strawberry pop tarts.) Because of its advance logistics planning, the big retail chain was able to quickly move in to devastated areas with mini Wal-Marts to hand out goods. Other firms leveraged similar supply-chain capabilities; Pfizer dispensed pharmaceuticals via Wal-Mart and other retailers. "What companies do is solve problems," says Johanna Schneider, an executive director at the Business Roundtable.

Pop Tarts? Check. Wait a minute; are they strawberry? Check!

Ooops - - forgot to order extra .... battery chargers? Guess they would have been "desirable."

From the Consumerist:

Is Walmart Price-Gouging Hurricane Victims? [Insiders]:

(Photo: chasingfun)

A Walmart insider tells us that the price of cellphone chargers nearly doubled on orders from Walmart HQ in the wake of Hurricane Ike. Before the hurricane, chargers cost from $10-$15, but afterwards, they rose to a uniform $19.