Wal-Mart to build 50 Stores in Struggling Urban Areas

[superconnected]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., often accused by critics of harming local businesses, announced Tuesday it plans to build more than 50 stores in struggling urban neighborhoods over the next two years to create jobs and help small establishments.

Chief Executive Lee Scott said Tuesday the new stores would generate between 15,000 and 25,000 jobs and be located in neighborhoods with high crime or unemployment rates, on sites that are environmentally contaminated, or in vacant buildings or malls in need of revitalization.

Ten of those stores will anchor "Wal-Mart Jobs and Opportunity Zones" that will help local businesses, especially minority and women-run enterprises, with free advertising, grants to local chambers of commerce and seminars and advice on doing business near Wal-Mart and with Wal-Mart. The move is part of what Wal-Mart calls an effort to be a better community partner.

Scott said Wal-Mart already has a record of saving consumers money and supporting local charities, but now wants to foster local small businesses.


more...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060404/ap_on_bi_ge/wal_mart_jobs

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. quite an oxymoran

we will help your small business by taking away your customers.

Are people really falling for this???!

[Marie26]

15. It's better than no businesses at all

This would allow people to shop in their own neighborhoods w/o venturing out into the burbs, & find work close to home, & also inspire the development of other restaurants and shops near Wal-Mart. I really do hate Wal-Mart, but still think this is a good idea.

[Matariki]

24. i agree with you

it strikes me as a good idea. i also think it could be encouraging to activists that a company like Walmart is having to do some public relations in response to exposure of their policies. hopefully it's genuine and not just show.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. uh-oh. This is not good. Tax breaks, cheap labor, a way of getting into

larger urban areas that would not allow them in otherwise. There will ultimately be a loss of higher paying retail jobs in the area, not to mention the total destruction of small business in the area.

There will be an increase of dependence on tax-payer supported health care and food stamps by the low-paid employees.

Walmart is already the largest employer in the US. 30 years ago UNIONZED General Motors was the largest employer in the US.
Opening this many new Walmarts and having this many new customers will increase the US trade deficit by more money than I can even figure. It will increase our debt to China by more than I can imagine. It will export more manufacturing jobs out of the US than we can imagine.

There is NO WAY this is good news.

[ClintonTyree]

9. I agree completely........

my first thought was, "what are they getting in return for this"? Generous incentives from State, Local and Federal governments without a doubt and much more beyond that is my guess. Wal*Mart is NOT a philanthropic organization. Everything they do has a purpose. That purpose being, enriching themselves at someone else's expense.

[toopers]

12. Isn't all health care tax payer supported?

eom

[Hell Hath No Fury]

3. So my brand new interior plant small business...

would be helped by Walmart coming into town and offering seemingly the same products at below wholesale costs?

Uh huh. Sure. :eyes:

[NYC]

4. Located on environmentally contamined sites?

...be located in neighborhoods with high crime or unemployment rates, on sites that are environmentally contaminated, or in vacant buildings or malls in need of revitalization...

Whom does that help? Will all the employees and frequent shoppers get cancer? heavy metals poisoning? Wal-Mart, the Radioactive Branch?

High unemployment neighborhood. Who will shop? If they are unemployed, how much money can they spend?

Seems like strange thinking to me.

[noonwitch]

5. A Walmart in Detroit would do well-no competition

There are no stores of it's ilk in the city. Target closed their 8 Mile/Van Dyke store, and K-Mart closed their 7 Mile/Meyers store (although that is now a Home Depot, which is good for the city, too).

I hate Walmart, but I think it would do well in Detroit, and would get a lot of customer loyalty just by being the only store in the city. If they built down on the east side, between dowtown and Belle Isle, they'd capitalize on a lot of the development going on in that area.

There was some talk at one point about tearing down the old Tiger stadium for Walmart to build there. I can think of a few hundred people who would chain themselves to that abandoned, empty stadium to prevent it from happening.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. If a non-union, no benefits, job exporting , tax bloodsucking company

like Wal-mart is the best that Detroit can do it is a very sad state of affairs.

You can be sure that Wal-mart's sudden "altruism" is nothing more than the realizatin that they can make a whole lot of money from this new found, untapped urban market. As soon as they have gotten their tentacles into it, they will suck it dry, and toss it aside, as they have done with everything else they have touched.

Think of it the way the Trojans should have looked that great big horse the Greeks left outside the walls of their city.

[noonwitch]

21. Unfortunately, it is the best Detroit can do at this point

As I said, Target and K-Mart have abandoned the city, it'll be a cold day in hell before Meijer builds there and no one else has expressed any serious interest in building a new retail store in the city.

The poor people in Detroit don't care about unions. They care about getting affordable new clothes for their kids without having to take a 3 hour bus ride to do so.

There was some talk a few years ago about Value City building a store in the downtown area. It never happened.

Similarly, Lord and Taylor had promised to build in the city after one of their security guards choked a man to death at their Fairlane (Dearborn) store. Even thought both the guard and the customer were black, it became a nasty racial thing, where Fieger represented the man's family in his lawsuit against the mall/store. L&T never did build in the city-it was something said to get the protestors out of their parking lot.

The only retail stores left in Detroit are mostly small and owned locally, except Borders and Barnes and Noble (Borders has a store downtown and B&N own the bookstore at WSU).

[Viva_La_Revolution]

18. Detroit used to build cars

:cry:

[pinniped]

6. These greedy fuckers are trying to pull a 'reinvention' trick.

To hell with them.

[superconnected]

8. It's clearly a press release by walmart.

Here's my observance of walmart on 164th street in Lynnwood WA, right off the freeway off-ramp. 1. Customers 300 lbs overweight, with tons of kids. 2. Customers who looked severly poor and underfed with tons of kids. 3. Employees that are minorities stocking the shelves with only white female cashiers in their 40's, and an elderly white man at least 70 yo at the door greeting. 4. Plastic. Tons of plastic and discount products. Sort of like a high price dollar store. 5. other household goods but clearly bulk discount buys. 6. Mostly no name electronic equipment with a few recognizable names - but those cost considerably more. 7. Junk food comprising the food aisles - potato chips, cookies etc. but no food other than junk food.

[bainz]

20. sounds nice...

Sounds like a pretty crummy store. The closest one to me is quite different.

1. I weigh 240 lbs, so perhaps I fit into this category with the exception on only having 1 child. 2. The people I saw look like the people I see everywhere. 3. there were white/azn/black male/female employees working the registers, but there was the token old guy at the door. 4. DVD's, books, tires, small appliances, etc. Didn't remind me of a .99 store at all. 5. some crap, some good stuff. Foreman grills, same as you would buy anywhere else. 6. iPod video, compaq/hp laptops, playstation, etc. 7. Organic foods, there was a cooking demonstration the day i went, extensive beer/wine selection.

That being said, the store was too big and busy for my taste, but definitely not like the one you experienced.

[superconnected]

22. I bet we both saw the same cookie cutter walmart

but had different interpretations.

[BR_Parkway]

10. 50 stores = 15,000 - 25,000 jobs? How many low paid people can

they squeeze into one store? 300 - 500 each store?

[Xithras]

11. Part-time, of course.

A Wal-Mart probably has 100 employees or so on hand at any given moment. Break that into a part-time, 24 hour a day schedule and it works.

[BR_Parkway]

14. Just enough to get them off welfare rolls, but not enough to actually

afford to live? It makes perfect sense in Shrubco world.

[primavera]

16. +20,000 MalWart jobs = -100,000 better jobs

According to the US Department of Labor, for every job Mal-Wart creates, approximately 5 jobs are lost from the businesses MalWart displaces. How kind of MalWart to offer to produce a net loss of 80,000 jobs in already struggling communities; that ought to euthanize those communities and put them out of their misery once and for all.

[depakid]

13. Walmart "opportunity zones"

I'll believe that propaganda when I see it.

Urban neighborhoods need a lot of help placing groceries and certain other businesses- but Walmart is first and foremost an exploiter and a predator. That's their business model, and they're not going to suddenly change and become benevolent.

Communities getting this pitch would do well to remember that.

[Ian David]

17. Let those stores sell things Wal-Mart doesn't want to sell? n/t

[The2ndWheel]

19. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Hahahahahahahahaha. Hahaha, hahahahahaha, hahahahahahahahaha! Hahahahaha? Hahahaha, ha ha!

[w4rma]

23. Since when did the AP become a public relations arm of Walmart? (nt)