Wal-Mart Considering Expanding Into Urban Areas

ft.com:

Walmart has stepped up efforts to mobilise local political support for new store openings in US cities and urban areas that were last month identified as a growth priority for the retailer by Mike Duke, its chief executive.

Read the whole story: ft.com

Comments

[bola47]

10:15 PM on 11/03/2009

a giant store eating monster is trying to come into the cities to eat your small local stores. this is not progress, this is going backwards to the "company stores" of the old coal mining towns.

[Laws456]

06:04 PM on 11/03/2009

Walmart is a traffic nightmare to say the very least. The cities have been right to keep them out. People should look for this video....

Walmart: High Cost of Low Price

To add to what someone posted earlier, they'll only provide minimum wage jobs, sh**y health insurance, and they'll put whatever remaining mom & pop stores in the area out of business.

[TinfoilLatte]

01:42 AM on 11/03/2009

I sure hope that their stores won't be a blot on the urban landscape. They could at least TRY to look upscale, couldn't they?

[spinns17]

01:29 AM on 11/03/2009

in the last 10 years walmart help send over 1 and a half million job overseas or to mexico.the price of cheap crap is going to bite us in the a$$.we already got a taste of it .and i for one dont like the taste.

[wernerholm]

11:24 PM on 11/02/2009

Keep Wally world in the burbs where it belongs!

[LeonBNJ]

11:05 PM on 11/02/2009

K-Mart has had stores going back to the 1970's in parts of NY City, and 2 stores in Manhattan since the mid-1990's. Target has several stores in the Boroughs other than Manhattan. Walmart has stores in New Jersey near cities like Newark (Harrison, Linden, Union) a new store to open in North Bergen NJ, only 3 miles from the Lincoln Tunnel. Various NY metro area discount stores are long gone (TSS, Jamesway, Caldor). Their best chances would be Staten Island first, then outlying areas of the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn near other big boxers.
If you think Walmart will never go into big cities, you are wrong. The politicans are more concerned with filling up empty big box stores and a few 100' mimimal wage jobs just to make themselves look good than going for more difficult to get better paying jobs into their city districts.

[spinns17]

09:35 AM on 11/03/2009

they think this trailer park store is a maceys or a sears .not even close.

[brady61995]

09:51 PM on 11/02/2009

the only stores left are family dollar wallmart might as well swallow them up too. america wake up. wallmart is not your friend

[jalowe1957]

08:54 PM on 11/02/2009

When you see Wal-Mart move into what was once a Broadway department store in the Crenshaw district and ditto in the Mall of Orange out here in Southern California, don't you get a sense that there's opportunism and desperation on so many levels at work here?

[JFaye]

10:57 PM on 11/02/2009

No ... it's just a good business decision for Walmart to become more accessible to a large segment of its customers ... people who live in the inner city and travel out to the suburban stores. One can imagine during times when gasoline prices are extremely high, it does cut into the sales because it then becomes too expensive to drive an extra 30 miles or so to a Walmart.

[Harry Scrote]

12:11 AM on 11/03/2009

Says a Walmart corporate employee.

[spinns17]

09:19 AM on 11/03/2009

i already see the empty store fronts in the areas that walmart opened here in illinois.this company is no good for america.along with the big box hardware stores and home improvement centers.

[Doug Flight]

06:57 PM on 11/02/2009

buy local !

[brady61995]

09:52 PM on 11/02/2009

theres nothing left to buy. we dont make anything anymore.

[retiree]

06:51 PM on 11/02/2009

A few years ago, the pilots were negotiating with the company I was working for. They were told that they could not afford to pay them more, however, while negotiations were still going on, the board gave the executives raises and bonuses. Later, when the company filed chapter 11, there was a PBS program which quoted one of the execs as saying that the bankruptcy was "a business decision". Basically, that means that they want to reduce their expenses so that they can continue to get raises and bonuses and maybe have something left over for the stockholders. I know I've posted this before, but prior to Reagan, the US CEOs were making 40 times the average workers pay.... now it's anywhere from 400-800 times. And who is at the top, but our favorite ...Wal-Mart...

[retiree]

06:54 PM on 11/02/2009

oops... meant to put this on the Ford thread, but the Wal-Mart stuff still applies!

[quiviran]

11:18 PM on 11/02/2009

In spades. Sam Walton knew Americans needed jobs to be able to shop in his stores. He was strongly in favor of selling US made products. But Sam died and his money grubbing kids and their Wall Street managers just turned WalMart into a tool for stripping American wealth for their benefit.

Henry Ford recognized the need for well paid workers to enable them to buy his cars. Maybe the unions went too far with the auto industry, but unemployed workers don't buy cars at all.

American industry is not being led by the visionaries that build greatness, but by small, self-important hucksters who actually believe they bring something to the table that makes them worth 400 times the average worker. Investors and employees are both being scammed by the collusion of boards of directors and top management.

[JFaye]

10:52 PM on 11/02/2009

This was/is Reagan's trickle-down economics.

Corporate execs were pretty much provided a springboard to squeeze the "workers" out for profit. The theory of trickle-down became fertile ground for excessive greed and it seems so unpatriotic that so few have locked themselves into our Nation's top earners at the expense of America's spirit.

In the absence of order, there is chaos.... Wall Street became the poster child for excessive greed in the absence of meaningful regulation.

Wal-Mart, as it expands into urban areas where the cost of living is often higher than rural and many suburban areas must commit to hiring workers at a minimal living wage.

[Laws456]

06:09 PM on 11/03/2009

In Florida, they don't pay people relative to the living expenses here. And I'm not talking about owning a nice house with 2 cars and so on. I'm talking about single people without children...Walmart doesn't pay enough for a single person to be able to afford a a one bedroom apt in a decent complex here. They have to find roommates or find the the complex that charges the least amount. In addition, they try not to employ too many full time workers. They don't ahve to pay overtime, and they don't have to provide health insurance. But they can go on tv and say they employ hundreds of people.

[Buffington]

06:40 PM on 11/02/2009

They trying to become like Starbucks?

[JFaye]

10:54 PM on 11/02/2009

Nothing like Starbucks ... Starbucks pays it's employees well and provides decent health insurance coverage as well other perks.

[smiththomas]

06:18 PM on 11/02/2009

Do not fall for the anti Wal-mart propaganda by big labor. Wal-mart is big reason for the low inflation rate in the past years. If big labor gets its way, the people will suffer when union wages are passed on the everyone. The biggest fear we have at this time is the potential inflation and high interest rates.
Add ;more unionized labor to the mix and everyone will suffer. Look what unions did to all of our base industries.

[Crass Innuendo]

09:03 PM on 11/02/2009

Damn improved working conditions and better-than-paltry wages! Damn them all!

[ILibertine]

09:33 PM on 11/02/2009

Unions created the middle class and as they have subsided the middle class has found out they are being squeezed into oblivion. You've got the entire picture inside out.

[indy100]

06:16 PM on 11/02/2009

The last thing we need in America's cities is another Wal-Mart. Ever looked at where most of their merchandise comes from? China. So while jobs in America continue to vanish we keep right on sending jobs to China, and supporting their economy instead of ours. I do still shop at Wal-Mart occasionally. We live in a more rural area and sometimes unless we want to drive 25 miles to the next county we don't have another option. However, since the local Super Wal-Mart put the pet store, and a few other local stores out of business I really try to buy local, and that means supporting small local businesses. I also look for organic produce, of which Wal-Mart has almost none. It's not just about price, it's about jobs, it's about local economies as a whole. Americans need to think a little about what we spend and where and why.

[mick7191]

05:42 PM on 11/02/2009

Just say no. Emphatically.

[massthreat]

04:47 PM on 11/02/2009

From a planning perspective this could be another widespread infill disaster. Similar to all the rapid expansion drugstores that have torn down valuable-yet-unprotected structures at the corner of main and main across the U.S.

"It has also established online “community action networks” of local individuals and groups prepared to speak out on behalf of new store proposals."

And these folks will be prospective vendors, uninspired economic development advocates, and local chamber of commerce shills.

When a corporate retailer resorts to hiring local lobbyists to work your own town -- get concerned.