While I sympathize with these kin folk, I hate to break them the news, you can’t beat Walfart;
Once again, hundreds of people come to sign a petition against the proposed Walmart on the corner of 69th Street and Cliff Avenue. Sam Khoroosi is among them at the Spirit of Peace Church.
Walfart may back down, but not because of neighborhood concerns. I still think they are going to build there.
Walmart usually “wins”, in that they build their stores, but recent history has shown that they have been (forced to be) responsive to neighborhood desires. Recently, they tried to force a SuperCenter into the middle of Washington D.C. (a mere 5 blocks from the U.S. Capitol), but eventually gave in to neighborhood demands and agreed to build a 5-story, mixed-use building in the character of the neighborhood with over 300 apartments and smaller retail spaces.
Link
It’s possible to tame Walmart, but you have to push a little. Otherwise they’ll just take a cookie-cutter dookie on your neighborhood.
MallWart
A lady KELO talked to said that Walmart brings crime to neighborhoods.
Scott, I apologize for putting this here, but was not sure how to contact you. When I read the quote below, I came very close to crying. You work in the bar/restaurant biz, right? Wal Mart is not the only one. This does show how greed companies have gotten and how they have the politicians in their pockets. This is from:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-wyckoff-williams/romney-santorum-and-gop-s_b_1338234.html?ref=politics
And the gap only gets wider.
The Republican-led Florida legislature is currently considering a bill that would slash the minimum wage of restaurant servers and other tipped employees from $4.65 to $2.13 an hour, resulting in lowered net income for workers, and a greater share of the salary burden being paid by consumers. With the average yearly income of these workers being just over $18K, it’s fair to say many already constitute the working-poor, and therefore cannot afford wage cuts.
Conservative supporters of the legislation cite rising healthcare costs for employers, but the National Restaurant Association — a leading lobbying group of the industry, formerly headed by one-time Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain — predicted record sales in its 2012 forecast.
One of the corporate supporters of the proposed legislation is OSI Restaurant Partners, the parent company of Outback Steakhouse — which is partly owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm responsible for a majority of Mitt Romney’s wealth. Undoubtedly, lower wages for workers at places like Outback will result in higher returns on investment for partners at Bain, and corporate executives like them.
Walmart may not be a corporate saint, and they don’t offer high paying jobs at the store level (other than to store managers perhaps), but they do employ a LOT of people. I would bet there are hundreds of part time employees which include students, the elderly, and those who just want a second job who are all thankful Walmart exists.
That said, the corner of 69th and Cliff is clearly and obviously designed for commercial / retail purposes. All but a small section of that land is already zoned for commercial purposes, so what these people are really saying is they don’t want that land used for commercial purposes because they don’t want to live next to a Walmart.
I sympathize, but you know what they say are the top three rules of real estate – location, location, location. If you don’t want to live next to a huge retail store, don’t build or buy a home near a major city intersection that is zoned to allow a huge retail store.
I have no vested interest in Walmart either way and I rarely shop in their stores (I’d gladly drive out of my way to go to Target), but I dare say they will do more good than bad in this particular case. Sure I would rather have 15 or 20 mom and pop shops rather than one Walmart but let’s be realistic. This is the era of the cheap Chinese widget and where people will do almost anything to save 30 cents.
Walmart fulfills a desire that so many of us seem to have, and I’d bet many of those very people signing this list have no problem shopping at one of the other two Walmarts. They are just a bunch of NIMBYs who seem to admit Walmart is ok provided it isn’t near them, and we all know most of them will be shopping there when it is open and just hoping they don’t run into one of their neighbors on the way out.
Craig, I would agree with you. For 29 years I have lived by LHS. When I bought the house it was because my DD could walk to school and she would not NEED a car.
For years I dealt with trash left on my yard from the students who parked in front of my house, kids who were walking in the middle of the street and did not want to move when I wanted to get to work and kids who parked so close to my driveway, that I had a hard time seeing to get out. Now I am not happy with all the traffic I have to deal with in the morning, luckily I am going north to the interstate.
Those were things I did not plan on 29 years ago, but life is a trade off.
Now as I am getting older, I would appreciate that Wal Mart being near, as I hate driving to the west one with all the traffic, so go east, which is alot farther.
As you have stated, Wal Mart employees a number people it works well for. I am wondering….if Wal Mart goes in there…how many of the kids in that neighborhood would be employed for jobs and how many retired people would be helped.
I appreciated your input.
PL – I know about that whole thing (Bain Capital). And trust me, I am not happy. BUT, I will say this, things are looking brighter for me, soon 🙂
I have not put a foot inside an Outback restaurant in many a year. Here’s why.
http://watchdog.net/occupation/outback%20steakhouse%20inc
Craig is 100% on target. This is a commercially zoned property (save for the little office parts that have to be rezoned). Its at the intersection of two major roads (one a arterial, one a collector I think). It has transitions in the zoning (large apartments and commercial around it that transition to single family farther away) and a railroad right of way adjacent. This is simply an issue where a group of people don’t want Walmart. NIMBY, plain and simple, and just because its Walmart (I’m conflicted on Walmart like most by the way). If it were a Target or any other large retailer, nothing would be said. Proof positive – look back at the Planning Commission meeting in April of 2010 I think it was, Hy-Vee was granted a conditional use permit. No one even showed up. And the commission gushed about how great it would be to have a grocery store in that area. That was a full scale Hy-Vee complete with liquor and gas station as I recall. That only died I believe because of the Sunshine acquisition that gave them a grocery store at 57th and Cliff. The only question is if the zoning is appropriate for that area (yep) and then if that goes through can Walmart mitigate its impacts on the neighbors (with fencing in back, alcohol plan, etc). His other point is right on target – don’t decide to move nearby major streets, commercial zoning, and all the rest and then be shocked when a large retailer proposes to move in. If a location with two major streets, a huge parcel of land, with commercial and dense residential adjacent is not a proper location – what is?
Not all commercial is created equal. I don’t think people in the neighborhood (it’s where I grew up) are opposed to any retail – in fact we were ecstatic when the commercial node at 57th & Cliff was developed – they just don’t want a Walmart. I’d take 5 smaller-scale stores (or better yet, a mixed-use development) over 1 SuperCenter any day.
PL – I have spoken with my manager about the above Bain Capital stuff, and he seemed to be proud of it. He told me that labor costs for servers was hurting the company (too which I just laughed). I told him, that is because you have too many servers on. You could double their sections and have half the number of servers on. You should concentrate on ‘quality’ servers, instead of the ‘quantity’ of servers. Some day soon you will see an Ugly Table about it, but not today.
As for Walfart, I have heard from one city official that one thing that may stop them from building in that location is size. Once they put in a parking lot and a buffer between the neighborhood and them, they may not have any room left for the store.
When your parking lot is bigger than your store (which is already huge), it’s not hard to see why so many cities are not very thrilled with Walmarts. That’s a lot of unproductive asphalt to which the city has to maintain utilities and streets.
I think the city will jump thru hoops in order to make sure Walmart builds there. All they see is $$ signs in the form of tax revenue we will be extracting from Harrisburg.
The better location, according to the city’s own comprehensive plan – a sub-regional commercial zone vs. local zone at 69/Cliff – would be 89th/Minnesota. Both type/size of store and land avaialble and proximity to future expressway would be better there.
I would much rather see a Trader Joes or a Byerlies come to town than deal with a third Walmart. Two is bad enough.
I really do think that one of their best alternatives would be for a developer to create a larger scale development with Wal-Mart as its anchor, and move it right next to the future SD100, which into the future, will provide much more visibility than plopped onto 69th & Cliff.
Putting Wal-Mart in a larger development would help to allow a large-scale development that is more of a money-maker than just having Wal-Mart on the corner, without any room nearby to build adjacent retail. No matter what, it’s due time this city has its 3rd Wal-Mart. Sioux City and even Fargo have 3 Wal-Mart locations, plus, it’s another large source of tax revenue for the City of Sioux Falls.
While I still stand by my comment that from a zoning perspective that location is appropriate for a Walmart (assuming they can fit the parking lot, required landscape buffers, setbacks, etc) which would be verified in the site plan and plan check in zoning, CCFlyer does make a good point. It would be smart for a developer to do something like CCFlyer is saying. Now that assumes Walmart would get on board. They may really like this location. They probably have done their research and have reasons to put themselves where they are proposing. CCFlyer’s point is well taken though. There is a LOT of research that shows that Walmart is a powerful and permanent stimulus for certain types of businesses that surround it (those that don’t directly compete). For example in many cities you’ll see a Walmart in a complex surrounded by restaurants and other specialty retail. In those cases the restaurants typically see a appreciable and permanent increase in sales because of the heavy traffic Walmart generates. Now on the other hand if you are a small business competing with Walmart, you’re toast. But the point is well taken. Tom’s point about parking lots is well taken, which is something covered in the Shape Sioux Falls 2035 plan and future zoning plans to try to reduce huge parking lots. Drive by for example Louise/Shirley up to Louise/41st. Some of those parcels, for example Slumberland, have huge lots that are barely used. The required parking for some uses is far more than it should be, and it will be changed because there is a recognition that huge chunks of unused asphalt parking lots is a blight on your community.
Many cities are switching to parking maximums, instead of minimums, in their zoning codes. In my opinion, SF should switch from its current use-based code to a form-based code, which regulates the physical appearance and orientation of buildings but doesn’t micromanage the uses allowed in a given development. It encourages efficient, walkable, and liveable neighborhoods and discourages sprawl (like Walmart), which is horribly inefficient in terms of a cost-to-benefit ratio.
‘Byerlies’
BEST F’ING GROCERY STORE DELI IN THE WORLD!
Oh for the ol’ days when people wanted to shop with their neighbor so that he could feed his family and support his community, instead of being jealous of their neighbor for making a buck like to today. Greed will be the down fall of this country.
“Greed will be the down fall of this country.”
A little to late for that now? Isn’t it?