Wal-Mart has acted in bad faith

Nov 09, 2006 00:26


Executive Summary:  Wal-Mart has not been honest with Fairfield.  After promising to leave the old store open, Wal-Mart then said it would close the old store and leave the City of Fairfield with a large loss in revenue unless it changes its General Plan to allow a SuperCenter in a site currently zoned for mixed use and with inadequate transportation capabilities.  The Mission Village site itself is perfectly capable of having thriving businesses without Wal-Mart but has been purposefully emptied and now that Wal-Mart secretly bought the property it may remain empty as an act of revenge if the city does not bow to Wal-Mart’s demands.

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I am not going to argue that Wal-Mart is Satan.  I’m not going to talk about mistreatment of workers or sweatshop goods or any of that because I don’t know the facts on those issues.  What I can share with you is the sad history of Mission Village and Wal-Mart’s strong-arm efforts in the city of Fairfield.

The following is a summary of the history written by my mom.  Essentially all the information is taken from Daily Republic articles throughout the years.

“When we moved here, Mission Village was doing great. It was owned by four owners, and they were leasing anchor stores to Albertsons and Payless. There was a K Mart and Thrifty across the street. In 1995 Payless and Thrifty merged and became Rite Aid. The Payless store at Mission Village closed. Albertsons merged with Lucky, and in 1998 the Albertsons closed at MV. While potential tenants were expressing interest in moving into Mission Village, Albertsons and Rite Aid refused to give up their leases to anyone who might compete with their other stores. The owners kept raising the rent on the remaining tenants. In 2001, an investment group that owns Ghirardeli Square in SF bought Mission Village. In 2001 Wal-Mart announced that it was going to build 40 Supercenters in Calif. in the next four years. In 2002, Liberty Christian Center got a 28 year lease for the Albertsons building, and the city amended the General Plan to designate Mission Village as mixed use. In September 2004 Wal-Mart expressed interest. They said they would keep their old store open. They asked the city to change the zoning back to commercial. Despite overwhelming opposition from speakers at a City Council meeting, the Council ordered an environmental impact report. The owner admitted that there had been no attempt to lease the empty stores.

The Daily Republic concluded that Mission Village died due to "deliberate neglect" by the owners, who wanted to get rid of the tenants. In Jan. 2005, Wal-Mart said it would close the old store when the new one opens. It announced that it was interested in building another Supercenter on the west side of Suisun. In July 2005, Wal-Mart bought Mission Village. In Nov. 2005, 7 of the 8 candidates for the FF City Council said they were opposed to the Wal-Mart at Mission Village.

In Jan 2006, Wal-Mart said it would close its old store regardless of what happens. In March 2006, the city issued its EIR and an economic impact report. The reports concluded that if both Wal-Marts get built, the grocery market will be over saturated and stores would close. The North Texas Raleys would be an underperforming store, which means that the Raleys Center and the new Longs Center across the road would likely die. Traffic will be at a LOS of E at some intersections -- D is passing. There will be air pollution that cannot be mitigated. Wal-Mart decided it wants to build its Suisun store near Travis AFB. Wal-Mart has a pattern of building multiple stores in a community, waiting to kill off the competition, and then closing one of its stores and leaving the other one vacant. Nice, huh. The Planning Staff said it would be easy to find someone to use the old Wal-Mart, but this may not be true. Wal-Mart has approx 400 empty stores in the US. There is not that much demand for those huge boxes. Also, in some cases they refuse to sell or lease to competitors, like what happened in Mission Village.”

What do we learn here?  Mission Village is not empty because no one else wants it, so that is not a good reason to hand it to Wal-Mart.  The existing stores will be negatively affected and some will close.  Traffic will be horrible.  Wal-Mart does not keep their word, and has been known to use dirty tricks to starve competition.

So why all the positive news about Wal-Mart?  They know public relations.  They do this everywhere.  They bus supporters in to the city planning meetings.  They get their managers to write letters to the editor.  They just gave our church $1000 to pay for the homeless Thanksgiving dinner.  This is to show what a good member of the community they are, even though they never did this before during the (estimated) 20 years they have been in town and only do it now when they want a favor.  That is really cheap good publicity.  In other cities they have also been known to bribe public officials, though I have no idea if that is happening in Fairfield.

Some may say, “Wal-Mart owns the land.  What can we do now?  It’s either let them build or it stays vacant.”  You may say that, but you may be wrong!  There is always the power of eminent domain and if Mission Village is purposefully being kept empty then I think it would be very appropriate for the city to acquire the land.    Some possibilities for it are a post office, library, or transportation center.  It could even be sold to developers who are willing to use it in accordance to the General Plan, though taking property from a private party and handing it to another private property looks bad.  Anyway, there are ways out of the current situation.

Ok, end rant.
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