Boulder CO spurned Walmart about five years ago. They just set up shop outside the greenbelt, where cookie cutter townhouse and big box mall developments are thriving.

That's the best thing I've heard in a week.

This post just made my day!!!!

My dad is a manager at Wal-Mart. He forced me to work there when I was 16 years old (I quit ages ago), and tried to mold me into the proud blue vest wearin' slave that he was/still is.

I hate Wal-Mart like any intelligent individual, yet every time they are insulted I feel as though I am being attacked too.

It's very sick how Wal-Mart has a way with their former employees like that. They steal souls, man - it's like I'm permanently attached to the greedy bastards.

Good call, NYC!

@Pelagius:

I'm in Colorado and I did not know that about Boulder, heh.

They're trying to squeeze a superfluous (aren't they all?) third Wal-Mart in my city. That'd make one Wal-Mart for every high school we have.

I am betting that the Wikipedia entry for "Pot Calling the Kettle Black" has a big old picture of H. Lee Scott Jr talking about "elite snobs".

Good!!! I never want to see a Wal-Mart in NYC.

"Wal-Mart executives have argued that low prices would be the universal language that bridged the gap. So far, they have not."

I think Wal*Mart's problem is that it CAN'T bridge the gap. Once every 6 months-3 years I end up setting foot in a wal-mart for some reason. They are just SOO trashy that it is worth the extra 1% to shop at a Target.

Great that he's discouraged, but no one in NYC should believe the statement has any meaning. Wal-Mart executives had no problem lying to the FDIC about their banking plans (see: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/walmart/2007/email_lies_fdic.p... ). There's no reason to think they're telling the truth now.

One of their PR people already is saying Scott was only discouraged about prospects in Manhattan, not the whole city. New Yorkers should act now to prevent unwanted big box stores, not wait to play defense against Wal-Mart again.

@Wendy Wayrad: Just a stab in the dark - Colorado Springs?

Boulder hasn't had any problem letting Target or Home Depot in, strangely enough.

Excellent point, Meghann.

I love how Wal-Mart tries to appeal to class warfare, selling the idea that one can empower him or herself with low-price purchases and that the supposed snobbish elite is trying to keep you down. When they try to make shopping at Wal-Mart mean something they are simply inviting people to reject it. I'm glad NYC did.

"You have people who are just better than us and don't want a Wal-Mart in their community."

At least he recognizes we're better than him.

Heh, Eyebrows, my thought exactly. And I don't necessarily believe it either. I knew my neighbors had successfully defeated the plans to have a Wal-Mart less than a quarter mile from our complex. The one they're breaking ground on right now, while I watch my property value nosedive.

@: @: @:

@Wendy Wayrad: You must live in Longmont. Don't worry about the three Walmarts. They'll close the old one (#1) after they open the new one (#3) and then there will be this big blighted area with just Hobby Lobby.

@Eyebrows McGee:

Yes, Mr. Scott, we are better than you and we don't want you're in our community. Thanks for making this easy for the both of us!

We win!!!!!!!!! yes! I feel so much better now.

New York is not the first force of nature that frustrated Wal-Mart. Trying to expand the Wal-Mart-Empire to Germany actually just recently resulted in the biggest bruise the giant experienced in its lifetime.
Wal-Marts "Statement of Ethics" was found to violate human rights and Germany's constitution by two courts of law. Neither the customers nor the employees ever accepted Wal-Mart's corporate culture and Wal-Mart made a loss for eight-and-a-halve years.
Knowing Wal-Mart from the U.S. it was almost comical and spooky to experience Wal-Marts fate in Germany first handed. First the number of employees was severely reduced. In the beginning there were almost more employees than customers, later you could walk through the whole Supercenter without seeing a single Wal-Mart uniform. In the last year they wouldn't even bother fixing anything in the store. There are cracks in the floor, lights are burned out, shopping carts broken and the WAL*MART logo reads L* ART at night.
The last time I went was the day before remodeling. It's quite eery to walk through an almost entirely empty Wal-Mart, almost like after a riot. The store already re-opened as a renovated, slightly higher priced typical German supermarket.

Vancouver, BC has spurned Wal-Mart on several occasions.. Even greenifying their building and parking lot didn't get them victory. Unless they finally won in the last round of proposals, I stopped following the action. It would be in the south of Vancouver and I never go there anyway.

I can think of one argument for having a Walmart in NYC: Union organizers would have a better shot at them here than anywhere in the country (with the possible exception of Chicago).

I love how Wal-Mart tries to appeal to class warfare . . .

nequam - Good point. Do you think anyone from the Walton family (mainly multi-billionaires of the never-worked-a-day-in-their-lives variety) ever set foot in such a place?

@H. Lee Scott Jr.: Just because we're better than you, it doesn't mean we're snobbish.

you are better than him?

typical new yorker mentality.

@closer: Well, I don't give substandard wages to my workers, deny them health care and basic quality of life, or bulldoze land all over the country and put small stores out of business, so yes, I believe I am better than H. Lee Scott.

Uh, closer, did you read the post? In it Mr. Lee Scott Jr is quoted as saying we are better than him. "Mr. Scott added, 'You have people who are just better than us and don't want a Wal-Mart in their community.'"

Soo...not so much having anything to do with a "new yorker mentality".

@formergr: Surprising that he (Lee Scott) didn't also call NY'ers terrorist sympathizers while he was at it (cuz everyone knows the way to get people to rally to your side is to insult them)

So, I must be the only wal-mart shopper here? If you didn't have all your other box stores and your normal grocery stores have a horrid selection of mayonnaise and white bread, you would welcome a wal-mart with open arms.

@Moonshine Mike:

I live in a small town with a Wal-Mart. There's plenty of other places that are much better.

If only more communities across the nation would be like New York, the US would be a better place (fewer people shopping there would be good too). I mean, how can a company that unloads a container from a ship from Japan every 45 seconds be good for the economy?

HOORAYYYYYYYY!

Don't Let the Door Hit You In Your Heiney on the way out!

God I LOVE NYC

@Moonshine Mike: I think we can safely say that New York City is not like that. Plus, was there that shortage of other stores before Wal-Mart came to town or not until after?

I realized something the other day that sounds obvious but I hadn't articulated it to myself till now.

In a similar way when Americans use the word 'race' when they really mean 'class', our culture is increasingly using the word 'citizen' when we mean 'consumer'. I feel like our rights as citizens are being chipped away, and in their place we're given the right to buy more things. We don't need to be able to truly afford something, or understand their value or expect longevity or utility. We just need to *buy* something.

When advertisers morphed the concept of buying a toaster or telephone from buying an item or asset into purchasing into a lifestyle or 'an experience', a lot of us lost that causality connection letting us more easily evaluate the real value of something. It's much more difficult to do this now than it used to be. Nowadays, when you buy into a lifestyle, you're essentially paying a subscription every 9-24 months.

Not exactly relevant to the wal-mart thread, but it made me think of its role in our transformation from citizen to consumer as our primary participatory role in society. Empowerment through lower prices? Talk about reaching. Lowering prices is nice so long as the cause doesn't depress your wages, stability and the variety of public/town life. Globalization is a fact of life. Hiding from it doesn't do anyone any good, but I don't see the massive training and education programs needed to maintain our distinct advantages.

Wal-Mart = the new Microsoft. The company(ies) people love to hate because they're big.

Not that I'm a Wal-Mart supporter, per se. Just think that there wouldn't be nearly the vitriolic responses here if Wal-Mart were a 3, 5, or 10 store chain. After all, if their approach is bad/wrong, then it's bad/wrong regardless of how small/big they are, right?

@Hodo:

They would probably be a little more responsible and pay betterif they were smaller. There wouldn't be the horrific economical impact that Wal-Mart has either. I'm sure Sam Walton rolls in his grave every day.

Good to see that "Consumerist" has gone from being about the consumer to just spouting the most recent anti-Wal-Mart talking points. Who does more for the consumer? Wal-Mart or some mid-level-priced to high-priced boutique in New York?

And this line? "Although the major opposition to Walmart has come from blue-collar workers and union organizers who fear competition from non-union Walmart..." Yeah, that would be true if you dropped "blue-collar workers" from the equation. Union organizers, hipster snobs (who still shop at just-as-bad Target) and the sort of people who SHOULD move to Boulder are the main opposition to Wal-Mart. Show me non-union Blue Collar workers who wouldn't jump at the chance to have a Wal-Mart in their Brooklyn or Queens neighborhood. People in New York are the exact same sort of "sheeple" (to borrow a phrase) that many of you deride. Open up a Target -- non-unionized, mom-and-pop killing Target -- and they come a running. Open up a Trader Joes (hello Suburban California) and they line up around the block. ... But for the average internet dwelling, media-saturated New York dweebola, those stores have a certain bit of trashy cool. Wal-Mart, though, is just too, I don't know ... trashy? low-rent? reminds some too much of their daddy?

And yall really need to quit living in this mystery world where "mom-and-pop" stores are employing vast numbers of people that would lose their jobs if Wal-Mart moved in.

Look at Chicago to see what happened there. Chicago's leading lights and union organizers kept Wal-Mart out, forcing it to open on the outskirts of town... Thousands of job applicants and shoppers then turned up at that very same Wal-Mart. But, hey, who cares about all those proles living out in East-East-East Williamsburg or Bushwick or wherever it is they stay when they're not commuting into Manhattan to clean up your offices and serve your food. Better they have no job at all than to suffer the indignity of making $10 bucks an hour. Better they do their shopping at the 99-Cent-Fell-Off-A-Thai-Truck store than have access to non-knock-off prices at non-outrageous prices. Or drag ass all the way to Atlantic Center to Target on Saturdays and stand in line for an hour.

Unions can suck it. The auto industry was perhaps the most unionized industry in this country and what happened there ... increasingly shitty products at higher price points ... until Japan came along and ate their lunch (and is still eating it... even while employing Americans).

There are perfectly legit reasons to disklike Wal-Mart, but the general tone I see in the Consumerist comment section is something I'd expect from the dimwitted villains in an Ayn Rand novel or, worse, the "fight-the-man" half-ass socialism I'd expect from freshmen in college.

@SpecialK: I don't dislike Wal-Mart because they're "not cool," I dislike Wal-Mart because they treat their workers like shit, give a ton of money to right-wing causes, sell guns and bullets in many of their stores yet won't sell the pregnant Barbie doll (love that culture of life!), and, yes, have aesthetically unappealing stores (every one I've never been in has been messy and dirty) and in-house brands.
Also, since you seem to know so much about New York, you'd realize that people from Bushwick, Harlem, and Forest Hills would have to do just as much ass-hauling and waiting in line at Wal-Mart than they do at the Forest Hills and Atlantic Center Target, or Trader Joe's for that matter. You think they're gonna build it in the Empire State Building?
Also "all the way" to the Atlantic Center? It's on 15 subway lines. That's what living in New York is for most people, "dweebola" and non dweebole alike--taking the subway.

"New York to Walmart: Drop Dead"

(anybody here old enough to remember the origin of a similar headline?)

A

'Bunny, we'd only have to be old enough to remember Ford's recent funeral.

A typical Pyrrhic victory of the New York left. Nobody would force anyone to work at a Wal-Mart and nobody would force anyone to shop at a Wal-Mart. I suppose the poor idiots who are too stupid to not work at Wal-Mart will now have a better place to work. Ummm- no. And why not force everyone to pay a little bit more for their goods? It's better for the unions and the rest of our comrades. If Wal-Mart does such a bad job of running a business it will fail on its own. Having special-interest groups and unions run business out of town is not a better solution. I hope I am not alone in seeing the defeat of Wal-Mart as a symptom of a greater illness in New York City.

To the defense of Manhattan, there are no Targets here (Only in Brooklyn, Jersey, etc).

The KMarts just managed to get into Manhattan before the backlash against massive retail giants.

I think at this point it's damage control though. No point in letting it spread.

SpecialK:
You hit the nail right on the head. This is just like being diagnosed by a freshman psych major.
Give me cheap groceries/supplies any day. I can't help it that the cashier didn't finish high school.

I also don't get this "Wal-Mart runs Mom-N-Pop out of town" nonsense. When Wal-Mart first came to town in Covington, TN, the only thing that went under was a ratty, small Ace Hardware. If M-n-P are going to charge me $5 for something I can get at Wally World for $2, why should I care what happens to Mom N Pop?

The myth of "Small Town America" is just that: A MYTH.

@: Well, it could be somewhat good for the economy given that it's the US' biggest employer. No walmart = lots of fewer jobs. (I'm not saying they're great jobs...but something to think about).

to H. Lee Scott Jr:

And f*ck you too!

Top 10 reasons Wall Mart would have failed in NYC:

10. No parking. No shoppers. No one will pay $30 to put their car in a parking garage in NYC to save $10, and walk in traffic can only buy as much as one can carry !

9. There are easily thousands of mom and pop convenience stores, bodegas, minimarkets, 7-11s, supermarkets in the 5 boroughs of NYC, which one you go to usually depends on proximity, language, and ethnic food selection.

8. With the cost of Manhattan real-estate, weather buying or leasing would not likely reap a profit for the next 20 years. AND...

7. No space. Manhattan is a small island, with no where left to build (unless they knock down central park).

6. Crime. They would be robbed BLIND. Every see TV or movies that depict NYC stores? They usually are run by Arabs, Hindu, Korean, or some kind of 1st generation immigrant that would not hesitate to kick the crapola out of the first a-h0le that tried to get some 5 finger discount.

5. Minimum wage just does not cut it in NYC. You can try, but the only people that will work for minimum wage are the ones who will steal 10 times what they make.

4. Cut throat competition. Even if the competition had to sell at a loss, just to flush out Wall Mart in a few years, they will do it. Wall mart could probably take the hit, but what would be the point of running a non-profitable business.

3. New Yorkers hate waiting in line. While this may be true of people in general, why would I wait in line for some minimum wage tart to ring up a dozen eggs, a gallon milk and butter, when I can just run in to the local convenience store where there are no lines (because the owners of the convenience stores are usually the cashiers, and transactions are held very quickly.)

2. Wal-mart does not have the human touch. Surprisingly, this is very important in NYC where, the smaller sores can make up a forum, and be the place where people meet, local news and gossip spread, kids grow up, people meet people, gamblers complain about missing their numbers, mothers on welfare asking for credit until their checks come in... AND FINALLY

1. I own a store in NYC. Nuff said.

Costco is big. Costco is cheap. Costco is not my style either, as a New Yorker, and I worry about nearby storeowners, but New Yorkers do not complain much about Costco, and this is why:

1. Costco provides health insurance. (We taxpayers aren't paying for their employees' Medicaid.)
2. Costco provides a sustaining wage.
3. Costco provides incentives for attaining higher education.
4. Costco actively tries to retain its employees.

Even though Costco is a big box store with problems like any other, they behave more like part of their community. They don't just dump excess cost on the rest of us and wait to get sued before they do something right (like Wal-Mart and their recycling).

So it's not New York, but Chestertown, MD successfully kept WalMart out years ago. (They said no, you don't get to overload the infrastructure and expect us to pay for it. Over and over for 9 years until WM finally gave up.) I don't think they got any poorer for doing it.

You're all a bunch of sad sheep. Is WAL-MART really that evil for selling milk for $1.50 over $3.75?

Do they sometimes treat their employees like crap like every other business in America? Yes.

Do they create competition that sometimes small businesses can't handle? Yes. (Do the vast majority of consumers get the good side of that equation though? Yes.) Sorry, I don't think we should all have to pay higher prices because we have some emotional connection with a corner store who screws you in the first place (and always have for the past 25 years).

I've been reading this site for a while and most of your answers really surprised me. It's like if Wal-Mart purposely made their prices higher and changed their name to "Trendy Spot 3255", there'd be no problem.

Unions can suck it. The auto industry was perhaps the most unionized industry in this country and what happened there ... increasingly shitty products at higher price points ... until Japan came along and ate their lunch (and is still eating it... even while employing Americans).

Yeah--it was the unions who designed and marketed all those gas-guzzling POSs and handed company management over to nepotes and superannuated frat boys.

i wish my middle america town was snobby enough to keep walmart out of our city limits