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Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Do you want a Wal-Mart in your community?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THIS BLOG WAS UPDATED JULY 19.
Just when you thought it was going to be a quiet summer, in comes Wal-Mart.
Nothing quiet as a community plans to build a Wal-Mart on Peachtree Industrial - a super Wal-Mart no less. People are all a flutter. “Not in my backyard,” they say. “We have two Wal-marts within an eight mile radius of us. Why do we need another one?”
To take pressure off the other two stores, Wal-Mart company spokesman Glen Wilkins repeatedly said, and meet the needs of customers who live here now and continue to move in every day.
It makes sense to me. There’s a super Wal-Mart two miles away from my house. There are two Publix and a Kroger within two or three miles of me. There’s a Whole Foods shopping center and a SuperTarget, as well as another Kroger on Steve Reynolds Blvd., all within five miles of my house. I absolutely need another super Wal-Mart in my area, or else I will simply have to spend my dollars in Norcross or Alpharetta or Johns Creek. Heaven forbid!
And of course, we have to take the pressure off the other two stores. I mean, in some cases, almost half of the cash registers are open at busy peaks of the day. Next thing you know, Wal-Mart will actually start having to hire full-time workers to help ease the pressure off those other two stores.
What really frosts my shorts is that we, as citizens, have no legal right to do anything about it. Ask Shirley Lasseter, our esteemed mayor, or any of the city council members. They posted a memo to their website: “…that the land in question already is zoned for commercial development. That means a Wal-Mart store or any other similar retail development is allowed…and that Georgia law does not allow the city to prohibit the use as long as the project is developed in accordance with City of Duluth standards. As such, this matter will not come before the Mayor and Council.”
What a bunch of cowards. Thomas Jefferson once said that if a country didn’t have a revolution at least once a generation, then that country would die of stagnation. Or something to that effect. Mayor Lasseter is too busy working on her bid for the Gwinnett County Commission.
Thank goodness that this matter will not come before the Mayor and Council. It makes things easy for them to ignore. I won’t even discuss the legislators who ensured that voters would be neutered and docile. Pat the tops of our heads and say, “run along and play now. We have money to count.”
It seems that our neighbors are flexing their muscles. Chris Collins, a spokesman for the city’s Planning & Development Department, said that the city is reacting to pressure from outraged neighbors. The Zoning Board of Appeals is postponing the variance requests until Aug. 22.
“Ideally,” he said, “you would hope that those opposed and the applicants would continue to work out some kind of compromise. That’s what I would hope would happen with extra time.” It doesn’t sound like there’s much compromise to me. I’m for business, I think most of us are. But business has to profit a community, not just its stockholders. It’s not personal.”
However, the juggernaut Wal-Mart keeps rolling on. Closing old Wal-Mart stores to open bigger, better stores, leaving building shells and asphalt lots in their efforts to meet the needs of the customers. The trees in our neighborhoods will be replaced with streetlights, mangled cars playing rap music, the sounds of screeching tires drowning out the crickets and nightlife.
Yep. Sure is going to be a quiet summer.
Do you want a Wal-Mart in your community?
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