Finally, the march is on. We’re getting a Super Wal-Mart! Now we can drive the local downtown Mom & Pop shops out of business and I can have my chicken tenders for lunch :). It’s been over three years in the discussion stage. We just got the plans in yesterday and have been going through them. The article came out in the paper today. There will be a gas station and four other out lots along the highway. I sent an email to Panera Bread some time ago asking for their consideration of a store here. Yum!
Rochelle is located at the crossroads of two major interstates and we get a lot of traffic stopping off at the Petro and Road Ranger out on the highway’s cloverleaf. Now we’ll have even more. Won’t that be fun. I have some friends who work at Petro and they say they’ve seen quite a few celebrities come through the restaurant and store.
With the Wal-Mart will come more business and industry. If only one was a home improvement store…so the downtown Mom & Pop True Value hardware store would have absolutely no hope for survival. Man, that’s hard to think about. On one hand, the Super Wal-Mart and a Home Depot would be great, but on the other hand, my good friends own the downtown True Value and it’s a great downhome place to hang out, you know, the ol’ checker game over the pickle barrel type of scene.
With the business and industry come homes. We have some 5000 homes on the books to be built over the next five to ten years. Looks like I have a little job security.
Moscow is getting one too, and everyone is really fighting against it…I haven’t met a single person here who actually wants it. heres the site about the movement:
I really hope it doesn’t pass, but I’m sure it will…):
I would like to have the Super Wal-Mart here for a few reasons. There is another grocery store in town, Sullivan’s, that has outrageous prices. Super Wally would take their arrogance down a peg or two. Secondly, we already have a very small Wal-Mart but there are so many items that we just can’t get in town and have to drive a half hour to the north or east to find them. It will be nice to have these things available in town for a change.
But as previously mentioned, growth can be both good and bad. Either way, the downtown True Value will continue to survive with the faithful who like excellent customer service and neighborhood faces. They can drive up to the back door of the hardware store, walk ten feet into the nuts and bolts section on hardwood floors, have a cup of coffee, sit and chat, then leave with the seven #12 wood screws in hand. I have the hardest time finding an employee in the aisles of Wally World to ask a simple question.
That’s 'cause the company doesn’t like having to pay people to work there, so they understaff intentionally. The store managers don’t usually like it, but they’re not given much choice. So I hear.
I love Walmart…
but, as I’ve said before, I’m 16, what do I know what’s good for society?
Oh wait, because I’m 16, I know everything
This definitely brings up the “do the benefits of more homes, more buisness outweigh the downfalls of the Mom and Pop stores?”
in certain locations…a Wal Mart could be a good thing. all I know is that in the cozy small town of Moscow, ID, where everybody knows everybody else, and people still say hello to each other, a Super Wal*Mart can’t be anything good.
If what happens in other towns when we come in is any predictor, we’ll put Wally out of business. We’ve also gotten your politicians to foot a big part of the bill to bring us on board, and of course all our employees will be on the public dole for their health care, cuz we don’t provide any.
Hey, cheap products have a price. The more you shop, the more you save. And if you don’t shop here at all, you just pay the taxes to support us and our employees health care, so you can feel good about yourself.
Where’s Gilby–who called me his arch nemesis [I build arches for him to unicycle over]…
Down the street from me (in Sacramento) is Emigh Hardware, and ACE franchise. The best hardware store around. They have figured out a way to survive in the world of big-box and Home Depot/Lowes. I think their key is customer service. Hold still for long enough, and someone will come up and ask what you need help with. I will always choose them first for anything that doesn’t involve large stuff.
Go Emigh! (pronounced “Amy”) They are nearly across the street from our new Wal Mart, the only 2-story Wal Mart in the western U.S., supposedly. It used to be a Monkey-Ward.
Optional solution to Wal Mart:
This won’t make them go away, but each of us has the choice of where we shop. I don’t enter the Wal Mart unless I have a really good reason. And I can’t think of any really good reasons.
I heard about a really cheap cashmere sweater they were supposed to have before Christmas. So I went in there looking for it. Couldn’t find it. So I asked a woman who was stocking the women’s clothing. She pretended to understand me, but brought me to something that had nothing to do with cashmere. She did not speak English.
Not speaking English is fine (unless your job is customer service). Pretending to understand someone and wasting their time is not. No sale for Wal Mart. I’ll go to Target.
Don’t question the source of the inexpensive clothing you wear – a child’s tombstone
Cool.
An Op-Ed in today’s NYTimes (Katherine Weber) rehashes the child labor/abuse that allows Wal-Mart to bring cheap stuff to the USA.
Chowdhury Knitwear and Garment Factory near Dhaka, Bangladesh (most of the garments made in Bangladesh are contracted by American retailers, including Wal-Mart and the Gap). Fire there on Nov 25, 2000: at least 10 of the 52 trapped in the flames behind locked doors were 10 - 14 years old.
Last month: Feb 23, KTS Composite Textile factory fire in Chittagong, Bangladesh – unofficial sources put the death toll at 84, with undocumented females as young as 12.
Don’t question the source of the inexpensive clothing you wear – the logo is a child’s tombstone.
and I can have my chicken tenders for lunch :). It’s been over three years in the discussion stage. We just got the plans in yesterday and have been going through them. The article came out in the paper today. There will be a gas station and four other out lots along the highway. I sent an email to Panera Bread some time ago asking for their consideration of a store here. Yum!