Why not-- here in Gresham they're trying to build one in an area that is zoned for buildings that are pedestrian-oriented:

COMMUNITY COMMERCIAL This district designation is applied to larger nodes of primarily commercial development clustered around the intersections of arterial streets. This district will accommodate a wide range of community-scale commercial uses, including retail, services, and offices. This district also permits housing as a secondary use, with attached dwellings being developed in conjunction with commercial construction. New buildings will be pedestrian-oriented with parking placed behind or beside buildings.

This definitely doesn't fit a huge Wal-Mart with 1000 parking spaces, mostly underground, as was proposed by the first application. Nor does the "smaller" store with 800 parking spaces.

Chris, you wrote, No, the real problem you Dems have with WalMart is the fact they're non-union. Ya'll should dispense with the Transit oriented development and zoning arguments.

Actually, I just spent the weekend in the Republican Heartland of Columbus, Ohio with my wife's family. Her uncle is a died-in-the-wool conservative Republican. I spent most of the weekend trying not to offend anyone. Late one evening, after most had gone to bed, we sat up and talked politics. We disagreed a lot. But, he brought up Wal-Mart and said, "I'll never shop at Wal-Mart. It's the closest grocery to our house - but they don't provide their people with health care. What kind of company does that? They're expecting us to pay for it!"

It ain't just pro-labor Democrats that are anti-WalMart.

Actually, if the problem we had was that they're non-union, we would go after stores like Target as well. Union or no union isn't the big issue.

The big issues are...

• they like to build in the middle of residential areas that are usually unsuited for the kind of traffic they create

• they regularly give traffic study numbers that are very different than those commissioned by the city

• they often put large amounts of pollution into the environment-- and they're trying to build along protected waterways like the Johnson Creek Watershed

• they consistently break labor laws, including those on overtime, making people work off the clock, locking employees in the store, paying women less for the same work, etc.

• they pay lower than industry-standard wages, often by $3/hour+

• they have expensive health care plans and pay less towards the health care than other companies in their industry

• they treat businesses that they purchase from badly, often driving them into bankruptsy or near-bankruptsy to meet their damands

• have most of the store-brand items made overseas where they less than $1/hour

The list can go on and on.

When Sam Walton was alive, the company was much different.

They would give grants to small businesses so that they could upgrade facilities and expand. That allowed them to supply products to large companies like Wal-Mart.

And they treated their employees well.

BlueNote:

I have absolutely no ties to unions and only have acquaintances that I've met through being involved in the Party who are members of a union. I have on "friends" who are union.

My dislike comes from watching the Wal-Martization of Texas. Where I live you have no options for school supplies, school clothes, toys, etc. other than Wal-Mart. If you have the money, you can buy clothes at the mall. But other than that, you're about out of luck. K-Mart went out of business down there, there's no Target around, and the closest Toys R Us is quite a ways away. However, there are at least 3 Wal-Mart stores within 15 miles of my parents' home. Several more if you increase that to 20 (not to mention the ones under construction). And they're all Super Wal-Marts.

When I buy furniture like that, I can't fit it in my Accord, either. I don't think a single item you mentioned will fit in my car.

Pretty much any place that sells stuff like that (other than stores like Wal-Mart) will deliver the items for you. That's what I've done when I've bought furniture.

Realize that WalMart allows lower income people to buy things cheaper.

This is completely untrue. As someone who has compared prices, I can assure you that assumption is wrong.

Wal-Mart has a certain number of items it keeps below the prices everyone else has. This will be some of what goes in their sales paper and the big end cap displays.

Everything else is the same, or more than, everyone else.

They also have products that are made specially for them that is missing key features. They'll knock the price down a bit and will have almost the exact same serial number (maybe an "A" added at the end). People buy them, thinking they are the same product they've seen elsewhere, only to get it home and find it doesn't have what they need (such as the TV only has one video input/output and no connection for cable). Try taking it back, and they'll tell you they can't because there is nothing wrong with it and you've already opened it (this has been documented thousands of times on boards about tvs, computers, DVD players, etc.).

My family's been "poor" for a few years now. When I lost my job, I started shopping very carefully to make sure I got the most for our money (before my husband's promotion at the end of last year, we were bringing in less than $23K for a family of three). I found food was typically cheaper at Winco, Safeway often has great deals on meat, Petsmart and Petco are cheaper for cat food and litter, Target and K-Mart's clothes were about the same price and lasted longer without major rips or shrinkage, etc.

I only shop at Wal-Mart occasionally, pretty much just for the few items that I love from the south but have been unable to get other stores to carry.

The one thing Wal-Mart is good for is layaway, which is used heavily by the poor. You can put just about anything on layaway (no clearance or hazardous materials), and you have 60 days to pay it off. Often times by the time you pay, the items will have been marked down-- especially if they're clothes. This means you end up paying less than they originally cost and you're guaranteed they'll have the ones you want since they've been put up in a box for you.

I've been trying to get Target and K-Mart to add a free full-service layaway for some time now.

To take action on this particular site fight check out Onward Oregon's action alert at:

www.OnwardOregon.org/cedarmillWalmart

Well, I've been comparing prices at Wal-Marts for more than a decade, so I have quite a bit of experience in it (about two decades if you count me helping my mom compare prices, starting at about age 8).

And I didn't say anything about people having to go to every location to get their items. I just pointed out that items can be found cheaper at all of those places. You don't have to hit every single one of them to get the good deals-- I wasn't saying that a few cheap items were here and a few there. In addition to single items being cheaper, I was talking about "overall" cheap. A few items may be more expensive, but overall you'll spend less. Driving all over town to get an item here and an item there wouldn't be worth it in terms of time and gas/fare spent.

Many times I'm just running out for a few things, all of which are good prices at the same location. The trip could easily be made using the bus. Or I'm going to Winco and Petsmart, which are almost across the street from each other.

If they'd bought all of it, it would be transit-oriented no matter where they shopped, as you wouldn't be able to carry that much stuff on the bus without great difficulty. It'd be something else to see someone with 15 bags of groceries, a 20lb bag of dog food, and two cases of soda trying to carry it anywhere.