October 06, 2005

WM in South Central

Cotidiapolis (which is usually written in Spanish) wonders, in my words, " where are all those moral grocers? ":

I wonder...why can't we find markets like Trader Joe's Specialty Grocery Stores, Whole Foods Market, or Bristol Farms - An Extraordinary Food Store in poor neighborhoods? Have you seen one of these markets in South Central LA, La Puente, East LA, South Gate?

Well, I am just wondering;

It reminded me of this 2004 BW article on Wal-Mart's store in South Central LA, and Sam's Curse from 2002 in Reason. From the latter:
As it is, Wal-Mart is already here, with four stores in L.A. and fifteen more in surrounding cities. While these aren't the 200,000 square-foot stores with delis and bakeries that L.A. officials want to banish, you can already get cereal and other groceries there. At one store on Crenshaw Boulevard in the Baldwin Hills section of town, you can walk up to the second floor and buy milk and cheese.

These stores aren't in the nicer or easier-to-reach parts of town. The Baldwin Hills store for example, is located within South Central L.A., which is better-known for poverty and gang violence than for its array of shopping amenities.

Here's Wal-Mart in LA today:


crenshaw.gif

Crenshaw is the number 1 on the map. You see why WM wanted to open up in Inglewood, no?

Posted by Kevin on October, 6 2005 at 12:58 PM

Comments & Trackbacks
stevelee9@hotmail.com wrote:

Actually Baldwin Hills is a upper income area! The Inglewood Wal-Mart was to be located next to Hollywood Park (and the Forum-where the Lakers won several championships)this is a middle class area of three-bedroom homes.
During the disasterous (for everybody involved-including we the customers) Southern California grocery strike I went to Whole Foods, which does a great job for it's gourmet customers. Loaves of bread are $4; people in the above-named cities are not going to shop in the stores mentioned because they are specialty suppliers.

-- October 6, 2005 02:10 PM ∞

Kevin Brancato wrote:

Now that's an excellent comment. Thanks!

-- October 6, 2005 02:36 PM ∞

joe wrote:

I only read the first part of the BW article, but it makes a great point..Walmart drives traffic. I work at a new walmart supercenter, and it wasn't built by itself, it was built in a rather large shopping center that is still under construction, which will be almost a million square feet if you include the WMSC. If those businesses were scared that WM would pull all the customers, then they wouldn't be locating there. And yes, some of those businesses are national chains, but many are franchises that are locally owned, or, totally locally based small businesses.

-- October 7, 2005 01:11 AM ∞