Is there anything good about WalMart??

[politicat]

45. I live in a town that got bit by Walmart twice.

Our local economy has been pretty stable, and our general relative prosperity has masked some of the detriments, but our town has a chronic budget problem due to the (popularly opposed but City Council approved) sweetheart tax rebate that was the result of a Supercenter expansion.

When WM originally came into the community, it killed several long-term local businesses, including hardware, small clothiers, pharmacy, appliances and electrics. But that was before I lived here, so I don't know if that was a full-on WM attack or just the result of an evolving economy.

Thirteen years ago, the old building was about 20 years old and one of the smaller ones, but it was also right next door to a grocery store. The grocery wanted to move a block up the street, which would have given WM room to more than double their space. Instead of renovating the buildings, WM insisted that they be allowed to build a Supercenter up the road (in a place that is much harder to reach by bike, public transit or on foot) and threatened to move across the town line entirely if they didn't get the permission and a tax rebate. The public opposed it, but City Council caved to WM's demands and the sales tax rebate is still pinching, ten years later.

With the old Walmart empty, the grocery (an Albertson's), which was already struggling, collapsed and our retail district died, leaving us with two empty big boxes, Then three, four, five as other local businesses faltered, and almost no retail on the south end of town (which is the more working class part of town as it happens) and more importantly, no groceries. We do have a grocer 2 miles away, but it's uphill and the route can be difficult on foot or bike, especially in winter. There's also limited public transit to the north end of town (the bus route skirts it because the streets are narrow and there is no room for expansion).

Then 2008 hit. Interestingly, we had a complete replacement of the City Council, and we now have all but one of the buildings filled with semi-independent businesses (though it did require declaring the buildings blighted and eminent domaining a couple -- blighted they were, after several years of minimal or no maintenance) and the south end is doing better. (The last building is occupied, but it's occupied by a megachurch, which means it's mostly empty most of the week, and doesn't generate much traffic for the other businesses, but does generate significantly unpleasant traffic with little to negative economic benefit on Sundays. Negative because the city has to pay for traffic management and traffic infrastructure without getting paid for it, and the church membership isn't great about patronizing local businesses after services.) From what I hear, the WMSC is not doing all that well, because the other businesses now in the old buildings (a farm & hardware store, an outdoors store, a grocer, a dollar store and thrift) are doing much better in part as a community protest against the sweetheart tax deal, and in part because the stores on the south end of town are much easier to deal with, both in terms of traffic and accessibility and in customer service.

Having the Supercenter did hurt the local economy for several years; the best estimate I've seen says it killed 2.5 jobs for every 2 it created. It certainly hurt the most vulnerable people in the community by putting them into a food and retail desert. We've come back, but it took some draconian measures (blight and eminent domain are powerful tools that can be horribly misused) that were highly uncomfortable to use in service of the greater good. Better that we had never needed to use them at all; best that the community had never gotten into bed with WM in the first place and thereby put ourselves in a position where they could blackmail us.