The conventional wisdom was that the Wichita City Council would rubber-stamp a proposal by Wal-Mart to build a Supercenter at Kellogg and Oliver, over lingering objections from some in the neighborhood.
But the council majority surprised many people Tuesday by rejecting the plan (with Mayor Carlos Mayans and Vice Mayor Paul Gray supporting it), saying Wal-Mart hadn’t done enough to meet the objections of neighbors.
The vote could mean no Wal-Mart at this site, or a better deal for residents from the retail giant.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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31 Comments
A surprise, but great news!
The proposed arena should be replaced by this proposed Wal-Mart on the downtown arena footprint. At least make some acceptable use of this expensive boondoggle by Sedgwick County Commissioners … TWO OF WHOM WERE RECENTLY KICKED OUT OF OFFICE.
Sedgwick County voters should vote again on this $250,000,000.53 white elephant, albatross, downtown ice hockey arena. No one I can find who is unaffiliated with the arena $$ still wants it.
Now the public is far better informed on the multitude of downsides of the arena PLUS the HUNDREDS of Sedgwick County and City of Wichita public failures — so let the voters vote again.
The proposals for the arena (remember the hyperplex proposals?) were voted down many times before it finally passed by a thin thread. Even then 81,000 taxpayers said they DIDN’T WANT IT.
SO JUST VOTE AGAIN TO KILL THIS WHITE ELEPHANT ONCE AND FOR ALL.
I wrote my councilperson about this. She told me she was listening. I was hoping she would do more, and I guess she did. Yea!!!
I wonder how many people wouldn’t be able to make it from pay check to pay check if Walmart were to disappear. Low wage earners, of which there are many, rely on walmart for their needs, as it is the only place they can afford.
Of course there’s still dollar general and the thrift shops, but grocery prices are, by far, cheaper at walmart. When there are mouths to feed, limited income and single parent houses, walmart helps them get through the month.
Like it or hate it, walmart serves a useful purpose.
Granted, Walker. There were plenty of problems with this proposed WalMart:1) inappropriate land use2) serious drainage problems3) significant traffic problems4) negative impact on surrounding neighborhoods
I watched the Council meeting on channel 7 on this. Paul Gray made a statement that I thought best tells of this controversy.
“It’s not about what it is, it’s about who it is.” Making the statement that if were a Dillions, a Super Target, a Home Deposit or anything but a Wal-Mart, there would be very few protesters and the measure would pass easily.
It’s just because it’s Wal-Mart. People have their concerns and grievances. That’s fine.
But on Wal-Mart’s end. They were ill prepared. Asking for another deferal. I did like Mayans remarks that he mention that it is unusual to ask for multiple deferals. If they (Wal-Mart) is not ready and hasn’t addressed all the concerns, then they should withdrawl their zoning application until they are ready.
My opinion about the whole thing, I don’t think Wal-Mart is evil and it’s a great store for many people. Oliver and Kellogg, I’m sorry people, but it is a bit blighted. Empty lots, run down used car lots, a poorer neighborhood. It could use a Wal-Mart and all the spin off developments that come with it. It would greatly improve that neighborhood.
I suspect that Wal-Mart will get their stuff together and re-apply in 6 months. With a new City Council, it will pass.
Wrong, again, Joe!
I think Joe is right on this. I’d like to see WM re-work their proposal to deal with the real traffic/noise issues. Some idea: acquire the property on the west side of Bleckley St so that it extends to the creek. Use that last parcel for truck parking/staging/unloading etc. Design no access at all from Orme and only limited access from olivar. Focus access on Kellogg frontage. Done correctly eastbound traffic could exit WM and get right on the freeway; westbound take the ‘Texas U-turn) at Edgemoor. 8 foot wall along Orme with heavy landscaping to its south.
I think it could be done; the cost would not be prohibitive.
You know, I like Wall-Mart. They recently opened a super center in my small town. My wife and I giggled with delight at the low grocery prices (we used to get RAPED at Kroger).
Recently we have noticed a spike in their prices though. We used to be able to get the 5 dozen pack of eggs for around $3. Great deal as we go through eggs like there is no tomorrow. Now that same pack (same brand, everything) sells for $6. We have gone back to Kroger and love their 10 for $10 deals and the savings using the loyalty card.
Bottom line, competition is good. Buyer beware and shop wisely.
Sol,Well-said. The same is true here. I’m aware of the price differential on items at WM vs. Dillons, and I plan my shopping accordingly.
I always check the weekly food ads (include Homeland) and then add WM (and Sams) to the list. Sol put it well.
Homeland…ack!
Wal-mart will price match competitors ads however it must be for the same brand. Discounts on store brands (best choice, kroger) will not match for wal-mart’s great value brand.
Goddess help me, I agreed with one republican today, and now I am agreeing with solly.
You have to watch your prices at walmart. Some things are cheap, but some are more expensive. At least out here.
Walker says: “Of course there’s still dollar general and the thrift shops, but grocery prices are, by far, cheaper at walmart.”
Not always. Maybe out here, where they have succeeded in almost running off all the other grocers, they just take advantage after the “market” has been cornered.
We are losing one of our two local grocery stores in my town, thirty miles from the nearest walmart. Funny thing…
…their meat prices were ALWAYS lower that walmart. Many other grocery prices were too. And our other local grocery store ALWAYS gives me better prices for the restaurant groceries than walmart. Better than Cashway in some instances.
I still have to make a walmart run for things I cant get locally, but one of the walmart employees told me many do their personal grocery shopping at Dillons (?) because so many items are priced lower than walmart.
And Julie is right. SOME prices at walmart just cant be beat. But you do have to shop carefully and know your prices BEFORE you go in.
This is wonderful news.
The troglodyte Wal mart probably has 50 battles like this every day. All around the country and all around the world.
Well they probably won 49 of those battles yesterday. But here? THEY LOST! Anytime that evil Goliath gets a stick in the eye it is a good day! Piss on Wal mart!
Wal mart verecke!
How many jobs would that WalMart have provided? Doesn’t that count for anything?If you don’t like WalMart, don’t shop there.
I don’t like Wal Mart and I don’t shop there. Regardless of that irrelevant fact, there are proper places to put stores like that, and in the middle of a residential neighborhood isn’t one of them. They can build their damn store nearly anywhere, and those people who want to work there can drive the extra 10 minutes it takes to get there.
Anytime money is tight, it pays to shop around for the best price. No argument there. I find many items I normally buy are cheaper at walmart than anyplace else. Meat is another story for the simple reason I prefer to buy by the piece rather than the family pack walmart loves so dearly. Plus the meat at target, to me, is a better grade.
I will do all my prescriptions at walmart, though, because dillons charged me $40 for the same thing I got at walmart for $7. That was a no-brainer.
But if I want gourmet quality foods, I will shop at target, as they seem to carry the archer farm brands that has been real consistant with their quality. Good stuff.
Dillons is my daily stopping place for milk, etc. Good quality. price and the $0.10 discount per gallon of gas on totals of $100. The only bad thing is not rolling over totals at the end of the month: use it or lose it.
But walmart does serve a community purpose when savings are totaled for people on a tight budget. It has allowed more than one family to survive on a minimum wage structure.
While you will hear from people who can afford to shop anyplace else regarding the evil they think stems from walmart’s policies, you will hear very little from the people who actually need it to survive. They are the ones who either can’t, or don’t give input to whether or not a store should or should not go up ina specific area. If a canvas of the people who need walmart were to be done, the consensus might be tilted in the opposite direction. Which makes me wonder what the REAL intentions are of the do-gooders who see it as a threat the their business.
There is something to be said about a giant parking lot and humongous store right outside your back window of your house.
I understand why the homeowners were resistant. I don’t know what the plan was.
Was there a buyout offer from Walmart on the houses surround the area?
I know buyouts don’t help people who payed off their mortgage years ago and enjoy having that extra money around.
Wal-Mart didn’t throw a dart at a map to find the location. I used to work for MapInfo/Predictive Analytics. MapInfo takes in a plethora of consumer data and translates that into the best placements of its client’s stores. Based on drive times, demographics… and a ton of other data.
The location: currently business use, Davis-Moore Mazda for example. Right on the Kellogg freeway. Oliver an arterial. I still think, with some fairly significant changes, it could be made to work.
This thing would have been only 2 blocks from my house. I am so surprised and proud of most of our council members! I hope the value of my house will get back closer to what it was when I bought it. Cheaper prices? I don’t like who I would have to thank for that. I don’t know that I could sleep with myself knowing how many people I was hurting so I could save a nickel. Fire Paul Gray and Carlos Mayans!
Happy Day!
The argument about Walmart being cheaper for groceries is so false. If you shop the sales you can get groceries as cheap if not cheaper at Dillons and the other store that replaced Food 4 Less. I do agree that some things such as laundry detergent and soaps are cheaper at Walmart, but not enough to justify a seperate trip to save a couple of bucks.
Sadly, this ain’t over and ChinaMart will revisit the issue until they get the desired vote. at least old bought and paid for Mayans is predictible, huh? lmrfsaao
Viva la Raza Blanco!!
Put a Walmart in the middle of Downtown, they have wanted to fill it up with people so the Downtown area would not be a ghost town, well…that would do the trick.
This family quit shopping Wal-Mart after realizing it is not a bargain, disdain for their business practicesand putting community downtowns out of business.They do not replace the revenue lost when a downtown dies and the population begins moving away. There is plenty of fair pricing out there in the world of locally owned business.
Corporate welfare programs are alive and well for the trillionaire beggarsbecause they’ve come to the notion that they are worshipped and their presence is an honor.============================
Wal-Mart’s phenomenal growth is the result of sweetheart deals and taxpayer subsidies.
Wal-Mart, the Alpha Dog of discount stores, has also become the Alpha Hog at the public trough.
The phenomenal growth of the world’s largest corporation has been supported by taxpayers in many states through economic development subsidies. A Wal-Mart official once stated that the company seeks subsidies in about a third of its stores, suggesting that more than 1,100 of its U.S. stores are subsidized. A national survey by Good Jobs First in 2004 looked at 160 stores and all of the company’s distribution centers — and found that more than 90 percent of them have been subsidized. Altogether, 244 subsidized facilities in 35 states received taxpayer deals of more than $1 billion.
The economic impact of these subsidies on small businesses is given a human face in one powerful segment of Robert Greenwald’s new documentary, “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.” The sweetheart deals given to two Wal-Mart Supercenters in Hamilton, Missouri undermined Red Esry’s four family-owned grocery stores. Esry watched his sales plunge as soon as the Supercenters opened — he couldn’t compete with Wal-Mart’s prices and lost almost half of his business virtually overnight.
In the film, Esry’s wife ruefully recounts how her husband went to City Hall to ask for a property tax abatement to match Wal-Mart’s subsidy, but was turned down. Esry cut costs, but refused to stop paying his employees a good wage and continued to provide them with full health-care benefits and a pension package. Red Esry’s story is being played out in thousands of communities across America.
Wrong-headed Subsidies
Giving subsidies to suburban retailing is bad policy on many levels. The proliferation of far-flung stores contributes to sprawl and its many problems: undermining traditional downtown business districts and worsening traffic jams and air quality. The diversion of tax dollars into the coffers of developers and big retailers takes much-needed revenues away from public schools and other services. The low-wage jobs created in the malls do little to stimulate the economy and actually serve as a drag, given that workers with McJobs need more assistance from taxpayer-financed safety-net programs.
The subsidies Wal-Mart lobbies for run the whole gamut: free or reduced-price land, infrastructure assistance, tax increment financing (TIF), property tax abatements or discounts, state corporate income tax credits, sales tax rebates, enterprise zone tax breaks, job training funds, and low-interest tax-exempt loans. The most deals and dollars were found in Texas (30 deals worth $108 million) and Illinois (29 deals worth $102 million).
And because of poor disclosure in most states, this could be just the tip of the iceberg.
Of course, the real force driving Wal-Mart’s site location behavior is its voracious appetite for more market share, not subsidies. The 2004 survey found cases in which the company had sought subsidies, didn’t get them, and still built new sites.
In Chula Vista, California, a $1.9 million subsidy deal was successfully challenged in court in 1998, after citizens complained that local redevelopment agencies were awarding state money to big-box retailers for projects with little benefit to the public. The Chula Vista Wal-Mart ended up being built without public assistance.
In 2001, voters in Galena, Illinois rejected a $1.5 million sales tax rebate sought by the company for a planned Supercenter. Immediately after the vote, Wal-Mart said it would drop the plan, but later decided to move forward after getting the private seller of the land to agree to a lower price. Wal-Mart also proceeded with the construction of an unsubsidized Supercenter in Belvedere, Illinois, after its request for a $1.5 million sales tax rebate was opposed by local officials.
Such events are especially controversial in TIF deals, since the governing law often requires that the beneficiary of TIF affirm that the project would not occur “but for” the subsidy.
According to a report by 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, Wal-Mart admitted that the TIF funding provided to a project in Baraboo did not meet that requirement. The report also noted that the supposedly blighted area chosen for the project consisted of a cornfield and an apple orchard.
Public opposition to subsidies for Wal-Mart has played a role in some successful site battles.
In 2000, voters in Olivette, Missouri, rejected a $36 million TIF proposal for an 80-acre shopping center that was to be anchored by a Wal-Mart and a Sam’s Club. In 2002, Wal-Mart was rebuffed when it sought an $18 million subsidy in connection with a project that was to be located on the Near South Side of Chicago. According to a press report, Mayor Richard M. Daley “guffawed” when presented with the request. The project was abandoned.
Denver officials dropped plans for a Supercenter project in 2004 that could have involved as much as $25 million in public money. The plan was controversial because of the subsidy and because it would have used eminent domain to displace a group of Asian-American small businesses. In 2004 voters in Scottsdale, Arizona voted resoundingly against a plan to give a developer up to $36 million in sales-tax rebates for a complex that was to include a Supercenter and a Sam’s Club.
Costs and benefits … or costs and costs?
Wal-Mart’s reaction to the 2004 survey of its reach into taxpayer subsidies was classic bait and switch. The company responded by saying it couldn’t verify the figures, but that if they were correct, then “it looks like offering tax incentives to Wal-Mart is a jackpot investment for local governments.”
Specifically, the company claimed that over the past 10 years, it collected $52 billion in sales taxes, remitted $192 million in income taxes, wage withholdings and unemployment insurance, and paid $4 billion in local property taxes. “Do the math and you will see that every dollar invested returned more than thirty,” the company summarized.
Of course Wal-Mart “collected” sales taxes; as a retailer, it’s required by law to do so. But that’s consumers’ money, not the company’s. Wal-Mart is just a pass-through. And since much of its sales come at the expense of other retailers, any gain is obviously offset by lower sales taxes collected at competing stores — and by the taxpayer costs of abandoned downtowns and malls.
Of course Wal-Mart “remitted” income and payroll taxes — it’s an employer, and is required to deduct taxes from its workers’ paychecks. But income tax is not the company’s money; it’s money from the workers’ meager paychecks. And since Wal-Mart jobs are largely shifted from other retailers and Wal-Mart pays so poorly, any net revenue gain is unclear.
And, of course, Wal-Mart paid some property taxes — all property owners have to support local services. Unless, of course, they get an abatement; our study found more than 40 such instances. But Wal-Mart offered no disclosure on how much in property taxes it hasn’t paid. And as economists point out, companies pass on the cost of property taxes to customers as much as market conditions allow.
So there you have Wal-Mart’s version of cost-benefit analysis. Taxpayer costs for economic development are balanced by “benefits” that mostly consist of, well, workers’ costs, consumers’ costs and taxpayers’ costs.
It’s ironic that a company which promotes itself as a free enterprise success story is so highly dependent on taxpayers. This fact was conveniently forgotten during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when Wal-Mart garnered widespread accolades for its role in providing emergency supplies to victims of the storm. Those truckloads of supplies should be seen not as corporate charity, but as small bit of payback for the huge sums the company has previously drained from taxpayers of America.
Greg LeRoy is the author of “The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation” and executive director of Good Jobs First.
Not disputing anything in the article you cited, Richard Heckler, but I don’t recall Wal-Mart asking for or receiving any subsidy, TIF financing, or tax abatement for any of its stores in Wichita.
But in Wichita and Sedgwick County, businesses asking for relief from taxes is routine. Just before handling the Wal-Mart matter yesterday, the City Council granted tax relief to two local companies.
In fact, last year Cessna campaiged for a Sedgwick County property tax increase so that a training center for their future employees could be built. Then, Cessna in December asked for relief from paying those very property taxes! That’s pretty clever.
HOW INTERESTING: ALL BUSINESSES SEEK SUBSIDIES WHEN BUILDING IN A NEW LOCATION.
For a ruling body, such as local government, to give those subsidies says waht about the local government? If the same local government gives those requested subsidies to walmart, whose fault is that? You’re going to blame walmart? Ridiculous . . . it falls squarly on the shoulders of the government and it’s elected officials.
Walmart has succedded because of the policies it put in place when Sam Walton decided he wanted to start a business that provided a product at a reasonable price. It has succedded way beyond that. To blame walmart for the 1,100 stores that have subsidies, without taking on the government that supplied same is trying to shoot the dog because some moron left the steak on the bench.
I repeat: Most, if not all, businesses building in a new location are going to try for subsidies. Why should walmart be any different? Got sports fans out there? Know of any sports arena/stadium built without subsidies? Not in this country.
You want local government to stop subsidizing business? Make laws stopping them. But be prepared to loose new business to places that will subsidize them. The subsidizing issue is a non-player issue as it stands right now.
If you think this Wal Mart deal is over– think again. This is not over. Before the year is over Wally World will have its store right where it wants it.
Shopping at Wal mart is un American.
In that case I suspect that a majority of Americans are un-American.