Wal-Mart Scaling back plans in Chicago(via Drezner):
Wal-Mart will continue work--for now--on plans for a new store on Chicago's West Side but will not pursue a proposed outlet on the South Side in the wake of wrangling and delays, the company said Tuesday.Wal-Mart foes said they will seek to block a zoning change that would allow the South Side store anyway, questioning the sincerity of a company that has been under a withering attack since announcing its intention to open stores in the city earlier this year.
Wal-Mart's plans in the city may be determined by what happens with two pending ordinances that would set minimum pay and benefit standards for employees of "big box" retailers, including Wal-Mart, said John Bisio, a company spokesman.
If a measure considered burdensome by Wal-Mart is passed, it would put the firm at a competitive disadvantage with other retailers, he said.
Wal-Mart has purchased the West Side site, at Grand and Keating Avenues, and hopes to begin demolition of an existing building there this fall, Bisio said. But "if an onerous big-box ordinance is passed, we may have to re-evaluate that location," he said.
Delays related to opposition to Wal-Mart have pushed back plans for a South Side shopping complex at 83rd Street and Stewart Avenue that would have included a Wal-Mart. When the retailer sought to persuade the site's developer to extend a recent signing deadline in order "to see how those [big box] proposals played out," the request was turned down, Bisio said. That forced the company to cancel its plans on the South Side, he said.
North Side Ald. Joe Moore (49th), a Wal-Mart foe, said he still will vote against the zoning change for the South Side property at Wednesday's City Council meeting.
"I am just concerned that Wal-Mart is trying to play games here," he said. "I have been around long enough to know that never rarely means never."
Critics contend that Wal-Mart offers unacceptably low wages and benefits to many of its workers.
Mayor Richard Daley asserted that Wal-Mart has "made a commitment" to proceed with the West Side store, but if the company doesn't build elsewhere in the city, "there's always somebody else to come in."
The mayor blamed Wal-Mart for its public relations woes.
"They have to understand, one thing at a time," Daley said. "You can't have everything. Maybe that's why they have some bad PR. I feel sorry for them."
Meanwhile, Ald. Howard Brookins Jr. (21st), whose ward includes the South Side site, said he believes that Wal-Mart still could be part of the retail complex there if the developer does not find another tenant.
"I haven't written them off because they still say they are interested in a South Side location," Brookins said.
Moore is co-sponsor of a measure that would require big retailers to pay a minimum of $10-an-hour in wages and benefits to workers. Ald. Edward Burke (14th) has co-sponsored another proposal that would set a $12.43-an-hour minimum wage and require that 40 percent of all merchandise sold by the big retailers be manufactured in the United States.
Moore's ordinance would apply only to new big box stores; Burke's to new and existing stores.
Burke said Tuesday that he would like a Wal-Mart in his Southwest Side ward, but not if it means backing off on his proposal because the measure "is the right thing to do."
Daley took a dim view of the proposed ordinances.
"If you start regulating them, you start regulating everyone, and I think that is very difficult to do as a city," he said. "Sometimes you don't have the development."
Posted by Bob on September, 3 2004 at 01:47 PM
