Wal-Mart Is (Probably) Coming For Us!

Wal-Mart (love it or hate it) is not only trying to open a store in the city, they want to open stores, plural!, all over the five boroughs. Crain's reports that the City Council has scheduled a hearing next month to review the impact the big box would have on mom and pops since the company wants to move forward with its diabolical plan to set up shop in NYC. The hearing is the 14th, and has been given the title: “When Wal-Mart Comes to Town" (can't you just picture the children's book, complete with a lake of hellfire?).

While the Council has typically opposed Wal-Mart in the past, Mayor Bloomberg recently came out in favor of it moving to town. The company's director of community affairs, however, doesn't see why a hearing is in order; Steven Restivo says, “With too many city residents out of work and living without access to healthy food, we don't entirely understand the desire to spend time and resources on a Walmart-specific hearing, especially when we don't have a store or an announced project here. This hearing is particularly curious since it seems to ignore the fact that the city is already home to hundreds of stores similar to Walmart.”

Steve is right, let's just submit and turn this place into a giant strip mall.

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By Jen Carlson in News on November 29, 2010 5:40 PM

Comments [rss]

da phonz

If they do move in, I hope the local TV channels don't take their money to show us their shitty smiley face bopping prices down.

urban_wanderer

Wal-Marts in the city also mean the presence of more monster trucks--the same huge Wal-Mart delivery trucks that hog the highways in other parts of the country.

maggie

If we want to harm the city's economy and increase the proportion of residents on welfare and Medicaid, then by all means bring WalMart in. Its deleterious effects on cities have been well cataloged and personally I think we're bad enough off as it is without letting WalMart squeeze another million or ten out of us.

whitecastlerock

Where are these mom and pops stores they refer to?

CityFace

Don't we already have a Chinese embassy in Manhattan?

jgonzz

Every time I hear that WMT is going to ruin mom & pop stores in NYC I laugh and cringe. Under what measure would CVS, Duane Reade, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Target, K-Mart and etc be considered mom & pop?
The only ones against WMT coming to NYC are the unions, hipsters/hippies and commies.

If 'the people' think Wal-Mart is bad then they will vote with their wallets. Anything short of letting the public decide is bullsh*t..

aspiringrapper

Bring it! About time!

Brainwash

Do Not Want Mart.

Oxford

who needs cheap stuff? we ny'ers love overpaying for everything! the poor? let 'em eat organic heirloom tomatoes.

Mark Smith

I do not understand the opposition...we already have best buys and targets and costcos and pretty much every chain store you can imagine (fun fact: manhattan has more mcdonalds per sq. mileage than anywhere else on earth)...seriously, before the big boxes took over the city I could see opposing this...but they're already here - why oppose wal-mart just for being the most public?

Blurry

Wal-Mart has destroyed more small independant businesses and mom & pop stores than all the other big chain stores combined. Gentrification by large corporations in NYC is making rents unaffordable for small businesses. Allowing Wal-Mart in will mean the beginning of the end. Minimum wage salaries with no or minimal health care benefits is how the Walton Family earn billions each year.

Tower18

fun fact: manhattan has more mcdonalds per sq. mileage than anywhere else on earth

Of course it does...it's one of the most densely-populated areas in the non-Asian world. A more relevant statistic for Manhattan would probably be McDonalds per 1000 residents, which is likely nowhere near as dramatic.

Mordicai

Worst idea ever. Claiming you want Wal-Mart for jobs is like burning down the house to keep warm in the winter. Wal-Mart will create minimum wage jobs & crush small businesses, destroying middle wage jobs. I don't want to live in a city of McDonalds & Wal-Marts, & I don't want the economically insupportable models of big-box stores around, either.

When the big box bubble bursts & people run around like "how come we didn't see this COMING?" like they are with the housing bubble bust, I want to be WAY clear.