ALBERT!!! Right on! I appreciate the concise intention, "I want to live in a world where workers are treated well, wages are fair and businesses act morally - this is a goal, and the biggest obstacle I see is companies like Wal-Mart."

While there is the impact on local businesses, the most voices around this intrusion is that Wal-Mart has not shown itself to be a responsible employer. Workers will be hurt economically, and if they are injured physically, we only need look across the Columbia to see how they treat those unfortunate workers. Wal-Mart is the ONLY employer to have lost their self-administered worker's compensation program put on probation. They were penalized due to their numerous and pervasive exploitation of the privilege to handle their own program. Wal-Mart even kicks people when they are down.

To me, the harm to the workers is the most critical aspect of the social deterioration they promote with their corporate practices. I'm not opposed to corporations making money, even gobs of money, but when act as if they are "above the laws" and fail to provide the clearest of benefits mandated by the law, such as getting paid for the time worked, i.e. the worker's that they demanded clock out and continue working rather then get overtime. They got NO time.

There should be no "Welcome Mat" for companies with these atrocious practices. They are not the only game in town. Put in a KMart. Cheap stuff and low wages without the corruption.

Gregor04 wrote:

"There should be no "Welcome Mat" for companies with these atrocious practices. They are not the only game in town. Put in a KMart. Cheap stuff and low wages without the corruption."

Here's the thing: if you're going to use land use law to say Walmart is bad but Kmart is good, YOU. WILL. LOSE.

While I appreciate and generally agree with everything Albert says about Walmart, land use laws are about the use, not the company. It's like trying to say "we'd really like a coffee shop on this corner, but not another Starbucks." It just doesn't work that way.

If the site in question is zoned for high-intensity commercial use, you will have your work cut out for you. But my main advice would be that you should dwell on a large commercial business being inappropriate, NOT the fact that it's Walmart.

Exactly Patrick:

How exactly is Wal-Mart different from Fred Meyer? They both create sprawl, have huge parking lots and are run by out-of-state corporations.

If the issue is land use planning then frankly I fail to see how Wal-Mart is any different from a Fred Meyer, Target, Costco, or Home Depot. They all have the same footprint.

If the issue is corporate responsibility then it seems to me that the more effective line of attack is the Maryland approach where they just passed a new law requiring minimum health insurance standards for corporations with a certain number of employees (Wal-Mart was the only one not already meeting the standard).

If the issue is wages, then perhaps another minimum wage initiative directed at larger corporations.

I think the more effective approach is to say to Wal-Mart, you want to come play in Oregon? Fine, welcome to Oregon. But these are the rules of the game here and if you don't like it you can leave.

Kent -

Before we go too far down the line of "Wal-Mart is just like any other big box corporation," let's remember that they are the biggest. Wal-Mart sets the standard for the market, and has a dominance that hasn't been seen since the days of the robber barons.

Every year, Wal-Mart turns over more employees than most fortune 500 companies employ. Their annual profits exceed $25 Billion. For them playing the land use game is like throwing quarters in a slot machine.

So, to change the market you have to first change Wal-Mart.

On the Maryland side of things, I agree with you 100% we need to expect that companies like WM help with our health insurance crisis, not exacerbate it.

One more thing, on the footprint - Wal-Mart typically has a bigger footprint due to their sheer size, and ability to force others out of the market. Their goal is to build at such a scale as to dominate a local retail market share. In many communities Wal-Mart has built until they acheived dominance in that market, then closed a store. Vancant Wal-Mart sites are hardly a hot seller, so they compound their footprint with the drive to overrun a local market.

If you want to change retail market practices you have to start at the top.

So, are any of the anti-Wal Mart people on this board excited to shop at the supposed new IKEA coming to town? Some people love IKEA, yet many others assign the same problems to them that they do to Wal Mart.

And the IKEA owner/founder Ingvar Kamprad is one of the richest guys in the world, worth about $40-50 billion, depending on exchange rates of the day. So he's clearly profited off lots of people in his day.

Why not throw some acrimony his way? Hey Ingvar, quit profiting off the backs of the workers with your cheap disposable crap!

No IKEA in Portland!

McBain:

I'm currently living near Waco Texas while my wife finishes her residency. So I see sprawl at its worst on a daily basis. This is TEXAS-sized sprawl, not the puny Oregon variety. And when it comes to development, I frankly see absolutely no difference between Wal-Mart and the other big box chains. Here in Waco the local Super-Target is distinctly larger than any of the three local Wal-Mart stores. The two abandoned big box stores I see are a closed K-Mart and an abandoned Target. No abandoned Wal-Mart stores around here.

Look, I'm not trying to defend Wal-Mart in the least. I despise the chain and even long for a local Fred Meyer where I can buy groceries and hardware on the same trip without feeling quite so slimy. But I think you are seriously off-track if you want to argue that Wal-Mart's development footprint is any different than any other big box store. I'm talking about physical development not social and economic development. Most of the big Fred Meyer stores are larger than the average Wal-Mart. Big box retail is big box retail.

The social and economic effects of Wal-Mart are obviously more severe than with many of the other chains like Costco and Target which pay better wages and benefits. But those are problems that really should be regulated directly at the state level. If all the energy that goes into opposing various Wal-Mart stores around the state went into an initiative to reform the labor practices of Wal-Mart and its clones the effect would be a lot more dramatic.

Kent -

I don't think we have a major disagreement, and sorry that you are in the midst of srawl texas style. But, here is my main point - Wal-Mart is in the drivers seat on retail development. They hold they keys to the car, so I don't see any problem with going after them with great vigor.

In terms of the hollowed out K-Marts, etc. why do you think they are now out of business - did a predatory retailer with 25 billion dollars in annual profits perhaps come into the market and destroy them? That is the other side to the point of Wal-Mart's abandoning stores, they oversaturate a market with their stores, drive out competition, then contract after securing a large market share. (check out Al Norman's book if you get a chance)

Also, I don't think that Fred Meyer stores are generally larger than Wal-Mart's. I just think that no retail chain will come around until their main competition (Wal-Mart) does as well.

Hope your stay in Houston is at best short, your lungs probably can't take too much of that great texas sized polution in the air.

Sorry, I just re-read Kent's post. Apparently he is in Waco. I have nothing to say about Waco, so if previous comments about Houston apply, insert Waco in the above post. If not, whoops.

Brian:

Waco is about the size of Salem. It's midway between Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin, about 1.5 hours from each of those three major metro areas. My wife and I live in a suburb called China Spring about 10 miles NW of Waco. A few crazed souls in our neighborhood actually commute all the way to Fort Worth each day. Not out of choice, but because their spouses work at Baylor University in Waco.

Around here the abandoned stores are not due to competition but rather to the expanding ring of development that surrounds Texas cities. It's like a shock wave from a nuclear explosion. The development just expands outwards in all directions to newer and bigger areas leaving the developed land inside the city standing vacant. There are whole blocks of abandoned strip mall and big box development in Waco that are standing vacant only because those same corporations built bigger boxes a mile or two further out along the most recent highway project. Texas highway taxes must be double what they are in Oregon and they spend the money grandly here on giant highways that suck up all the new development.

Maybe the Wal-Mart stores are smaller here in Texas because they are older, but the ones I see are not remotely as large as the big Fred Meyer stores I remember in Portland and Anchorage. They also aren't as large as the big Super Target stores I see around Texas.

Can someone please explain to me exactly how Wal-Mart causes sprawl in Oregon when it must abide by Oregon's land-use planning regs, including urban growth boundaries which restrict expansion, among other things.

Since technically you can't have sprawl when there's literally a line drawn around what can be developed and keeping everything else off-limits, what exactly does the unhinged opposition mean by sprawl? Traffic? Development in general?

It seems to me that if individuals support a UGB and all related planning to make a place more "liveable" (whatever the hell that means), one needs to get used to the idea that things are going to be crammed in more densely - including Wal-Mart.

But how exactly is that sprawl?

Here's the second definition of sprawl at Websters.com:

"To spread out in a straggling or disordered fashion: untidy tenements sprawling toward the river."

Every Wal-Mart site you bring up is well within the Urban Growth Boundary. They might not be the use exactly consistent with current zoning or overlays and thus a Measure 37 issue potentially, but they do nothing to cause "sprawl".

Don't you really mean that you don't like Wal-Mart personally and that you subjectively oppose Wal-Mart, even though they are exercising their legal rights to pursue development?

Even better, here's Websters.com's second definition for sprawl as a noun:

"Haphazard growth or extension outward, especially that resulting from real estate development on the outskirts of a city: urban sprawl."

??

Of course, Oregonians aren't the only ones feeling uneasy.

Wal-Mart is also working with developers on a plan for a new Wal-Mart in Portland, in the Sellwood area. For disclosure, I ought to mention I work for the commissioner who's been quite vocal against this proposal.

Thanks Leslie, for pointing that out...IKEA is a Swedish-based entity. If you want a textbook for benevolent socialism, it has to be Sweden (but with an unfortunately high tax rate of almost 70% too). Gut instinct said that IKEA couldn't be compared to WalMart in this sense. Thanks for the facts to back it up.

And Albert, thanks for writing this original post - so good I am afraid I have to link to it from my blog now, my man!

So the point here is that you don't like retail development in general, like Wal-Mart, Jack in the Box and others you mention.

Wood Village sits along I-84 and is one of the primary freeway exits for getting to Mount Hood. Wal-Mart didn't create the traffic; Eisenhower did by signing the bill that began the Interstate highway system. Where there's traffic, there's opportunity to sell to that traffic as it passes by.

What's the problem with that? If you call the City of Wood Village, I guarantee you (I've consulted for them) they have no qualms whatsoever about retail locating to their community. They're even pushing for a local sales tax to take advantage of it. That's how they fund their city costs.. tax revenue on commercial development.

And what's wrong with Wal-Mart leasing land to develop? It's a very common and perfectly legal approach to siting development when the property owner would rather not sell, but doesn't intend to use it other than letting it go fallow.

It seems to me that since a municipality can now take your property when the beneficiary is a private entity, thanks to SCOTUS, folks living in trailer parks and other low-income individuals are even more at risk of losing their largest asset - their home. Mobile home parks, as documented in this morning's Oregonian, are being sold and developed and leaving low-income individuals with no choices.

So tell me, which community impact is worse: more traffic, though empirically no more than any other big box retailer of that size OR low-income individuals having their largest assets jeopardized and risking homelessness because land availability, restricted by the UGB, has driven home prices high enough that redevelopment of mobile home parks makes financial sense?

Liveable for whom did you say?

Clearly the legal eagles see that the court battles will be coming. And they are right. However, I do feel that the PR battle is another front on which to attack Wal-Mart. I do not believe Wal-Mart is just like any other Big Box. Not at all. Their methods are particularly disrespectful of the laws. I don't think we should assume that because Wal-Mart has been caught, everyone else does it. If anyone knows of another Big Box under this level of scrutiny, my years are open. I suggest that Wal-Mart is particularly brutal with their labor practices like none other. Nor should we perpetuate Wal-Marts malicious practices toward labor by giving a nod to any other organization found to practice similar techiniques. That makes as much sense as turning our heads toward the torture in Gitmo because the terrorists behead their hostages, neither is right.