Up Against the Wal-Mart
I had to do a story tonight about yet another fight between Wal-Mart and people who live near the site of a proposed Super Center. "They're a nice place to visit," I wrote. "But who wants to live near one?"
People at the upscale apartments and the housing development behind the empty site don't want the "riff-raff," as one woman described Wal-Mart customers, to spill into their streets. It will lower property values and raise crime rates, residents told me. Never mind that Wal-Mart is even offering to pay millions to widen public roads near the site, has shrunk the size of its planned store and made other concessions in the face of the opposition. "It doesn't fit with this neighborhood," another woman said.
But the dog track and the strip club across the street do? Wow! There must be more excitement going on in Wal-Mart than I ever noticed.
What's really going on is a kind of elitism. "Have you ever seen the people in Wal-Mart late at night?" a pretty blonde who works in the apartment complex' office asked me. Obviously not the kind she wanted to associate with.
That was before the property manager came and unceremoniously evicted us from the premises. I guess we were not the kind of people they want to associate with, either.
They want to think they're better than Wal-Mart customers yet how many of them do you think are Wal-Mart customers? If a Target or a Publix (a grocery chain based in Florida) wanted to move in, would that be a problem? Probably not. But Wal-Mart is somehow beneath them, a place in which only the rabble would admit shopping.
The super center is no sure thing yet, though one woman I interviewed said she was moving her family in part because she wants to beat the onslaught of people selling their homes if "they (Wal-Mart) somehow weasel their way in there," she said.
If enough of them shout about falling property values, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It must be a crappy place, people will think, just listen to what those who live there now say about it.
Don't get me wrong. I don't love Wal-Mart. I think the company is growing too big for its britches and could use the cutting down it's getting in communites that send it packing.
But worse than a strip club? Get real.
People at the upscale apartments and the housing development behind the empty site don't want the "riff-raff," as one woman described Wal-Mart customers, to spill into their streets. It will lower property values and raise crime rates, residents told me. Never mind that Wal-Mart is even offering to pay millions to widen public roads near the site, has shrunk the size of its planned store and made other concessions in the face of the opposition. "It doesn't fit with this neighborhood," another woman said.
But the dog track and the strip club across the street do? Wow! There must be more excitement going on in Wal-Mart than I ever noticed.
What's really going on is a kind of elitism. "Have you ever seen the people in Wal-Mart late at night?" a pretty blonde who works in the apartment complex' office asked me. Obviously not the kind she wanted to associate with.
That was before the property manager came and unceremoniously evicted us from the premises. I guess we were not the kind of people they want to associate with, either.
They want to think they're better than Wal-Mart customers yet how many of them do you think are Wal-Mart customers? If a Target or a Publix (a grocery chain based in Florida) wanted to move in, would that be a problem? Probably not. But Wal-Mart is somehow beneath them, a place in which only the rabble would admit shopping.
The super center is no sure thing yet, though one woman I interviewed said she was moving her family in part because she wants to beat the onslaught of people selling their homes if "they (Wal-Mart) somehow weasel their way in there," she said.
If enough of them shout about falling property values, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It must be a crappy place, people will think, just listen to what those who live there now say about it.
Don't get me wrong. I don't love Wal-Mart. I think the company is growing too big for its britches and could use the cutting down it's getting in communites that send it packing.
But worse than a strip club? Get real.
posted by jack at 1:11 AM
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