Anti-Walmart in Ventura

[ From: "Anti-Wal-Mart groups vow continued scrutiny of retailer's Ventura plans," TradingMarkets.com, November 05, 2009, quoting from the Ventura County Star, November 4. ]

Supporters of a failed ballot measure created to keep Wal-Mart out of Ventura vowed today to continue scrutinizing the retailer's plans to take over the closed Kmart store on Victoria Avenue.

About 55 percent of voters rejected Measure C in Tuesday's election, while 45 percent supported it. The measure would have barred any new store citywide larger than 90,000 square feet that uses more than 3 percent of its sales floor area to sell groceries.

Although the measure did not mention Wal-Mart by name, proponents were among those who spearheaded the Stop Wal-Mart Ventura Coalition after the retail giant proposed replacing the closed Kmart with a 150,000-square-foot store. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has submitted revised plans calling for a 98,000-square-foot store, with a new entrance and facade, a garden center and realigned parking. The stores complies with city rules that restrict stores along the busy Victoria corridor to no more than 100,000 square feet, according to city planners.

"We will continue to work to make sure Wal-Mart has to adhere to the city's codes," said Das Williams, a spokesman for Livable Ventura, a citizens group that is part of the Stop Wal-Mart Ventura Coalition. A store boycott also has been discussed, he said.

Wal-Mart's plans also show an additional loading dock would be constructed behind an adjacent, vacant commercial building. The building, which Wal-Mart controls, likely would be leased out, according to a company spokesman.

The plans still need approval from the city's Design Review Committee. City planners have recommended Wal-Mart and the committee meet again in an informal public hearing to iron out details -- an invitation Wal-Mart is still considering, officials said.

The store would be Wal-Mart's third in Ventura County, joining ones in Simi Valley and Oxnard. Wal-Mart also has a Sam's Club in Oxnard.

Labels: Ventura, Wal-Mart, Walmart

Lompoc Opposition to Walmart

[ From "Lompoc Citizens Against Walmart Expansion moving forward," by Robert Cuthbert, Central Coast Democrat Examiner, October 29, 2009 ]

The Lompoc group fighting a Walmart expansion is building its campaign. Thursday night the group held a meeting with two guest speakers. If Walmart was hoping this group was going away anytime soon. They’re wrong.

Elliott Petty, well known community activist, lead a successful campaign in Inglewood, California, stopping Los Angeles’ first Supercenter. In 2004 the community of Inglewood rejected a measure for a Walmart Supercenter the size of “seventeen football fields.”

According to Petty Walmart spent “over a million dollars in a public relations campaign” across the city, using “typical rhetoric that Walmart creates jobs and increases land value” in a community. The Coalition for a Better Inglewood launched a grassroots campaign that “united community activists” opposing the retailer’s ballot measure.

Petty spoke about Walmart’s Inglewood ballot measure, “With land already bought, a shopping center was proposed that included a Supercenter.” “At the beginning, the Inglewood community was two to one in favor of it. By the time we were finished the final votes were two to one against,” reported Petty.

The second speaker Santa Barbara City Councilmember Das Williams said, “Getting the Walmart expansion defeated in Lompoc is all about keeping the town's self respect.” Both speakers encouraged local activists, and citizens, that success was more than possible in Lompoc. Also, both felt the likely scenario would be, given current trends, that a ballot measure defining “big box” development for the City is likley.

Das Williams, who also works as a legislative analyst, is a member of Livable Ventura that in turn is affiliated with Ventura’s Stop Walmart Coalition. Williams explained at length aspects of developing a ballot measure to “put restrictions on Walmart's size.” Williams said he is committed and will continue to help. He suggested, “We need to tell the City Council if they aren't willing to restrict by the ballot process, there will be future City Council members willing to do so.”

In a typical ploy, Walmart seems to be stalling on forwarding information for the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) in the hope opposition will dissipate. The required information was expected by mid-October, failing that, city officials expect the next step in the EIR process will take place in January 2010. Then the public will have a second comment period on the “Draft Walmart EIR.”

With this latest morale booster the Lompoc group is showing no sign of letting up. They have over 2000 signatures, have collected donations, and continue to develop nonpartisan contacts in the broader community.

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See also: Lompoc Walmart Expansion Opposed, September 16, 2009

Labels: Lompoc, Wal-Mart, Walmart

Ventura's Measure C

Future of supercenters in Ventura contingent on Measure C

By Paul Sisolak 10/22/2009

The old, empty Kmart on Victoria Avenue is shuttered and desolate, with hardly any signs of life on its side of the large shopping plaza; yet the space formerly inhabited by the retailer is getting plenty of attention from both sides of the political spectrum.

The fight over Measure C, the contentious ballot initiative some say could forever define Ventura’s business climate, will end on Election Day, when voters decide if “big box” superstores should be allowed in the city.

A yes vote for Measure C means supporting adoption of an ordinance that would prohibit any retail business larger than 90,000 square feet that devotes more than three percent of its sales floor to groceries and non-taxable items. Wholesale clubs are exempt.

The measure’s supporters don’t want supercenters anywhere in Ventura because they feel such stores breed crime, traffic, and do more to stifle the local economy by domineering small businesses and competing grocers.

But where Measure C’s ballot language doesn’t directly address Wal-Mart as its culprit, proponents use the corporation as valid reasoning behind their determined “Stop Wal-Mart” campaign, started when Wal-Mart leased out the vacant Kmart and announced plans to make its new home there.

“We didn’t just do this as an emotional response. We researched what Wal-Mart does to communities. It’s not good for our(s),” says Das Williams, a legislative analyst for CAUSE, and a key member of Livable Ventura.

The latter group is chaired by Nan Waltman, who decries Wal-Mart mostly for its perceived poor business model and reputation for treating employees badly.

“It’s not a level playing field with Wal-Mart,” she said.

On the Measure C playing field, the fight boils down to tangible numbers: the square footage that constitutes a big box supercenter.

Wal-Mart’s most recent application to the city’s design review committee, for a re-use of the former Kmart, requests a storefront maxed out at 98,000 square feet. That measurement still falls within the guidelines of the city’s Victoria Corridor Plan, which currently prohibits any retailer from exceeding 100,000 square feet in space.

It’s precisely why Alison Carlson, one vocal opponent to Measure C, calls the initiative “irrelevant” because supercenters are already barred by city law from setting up shop on Victoria Avenue to begin with.

“In no case would that Wal-Mart be applicable to Measure C,” she says.

Regardless, Waltman’s support of Measure C is precautionary. Without a ban on supercenters, she says, city codes like the Victoria Corridor Plan could be left open to change simply from a Ventura City Council quorum, allowing for stores to grow to supercenter size and beyond.

“This is a decision of the voters that the council cannot tamper with,” Waltman said.

Measure C, she notes, would also protect other grocery chains like Vons, Ralphs or Trader Joe’s — each of which are located on Victoria within a mile of the proposed Wal-Mart — from losing both business and employees.

Along with Carlson, opponents, who include three city council members, maintain that a standard-sized Wal-Mart can and will move to Victoria Avenue, regardless of Measure C, on terms of its lease. Those council members — Mayor Christy Weir, Neal Andrews and Carl Morehouse — also believe in giving consumers the right to shop where they choose.

But both Waltman and Williams say that they are worried about Wal-Mart moving in and slowly building out, piece by piece, until it can fulfill what the opponents allege to be Wal-Mart’s supercenter size.

“If C passes, they’re truly stuck at 90,000 square feet if they want groceries, and we’ve never seen a Wal-Mart do that,” Waltman said.

According to Mayor Weir, since Measure C is a citywide initiative, other large Ventura retailers, such as both Target stores, would be obligated to follow its rules. This could hurt business at the 142,868-square-foot Main Street Target, and the Pacific View Mall’s Target, which carries groceries and measures at nearly 205,000 square feet.

“They’re fine as long as they don’t change a thing,” Weir said.

To see the effects on business competition, traffic and crime Wal-Mart plays in the community, one need look no further than Oxnard, where a Wal-Mart has operated on Rose Avenue since 1992.

The Wal-Mart, according to Curtis Cannon, Oxnard’s community development director, now totals 174,227 square feet, having just completed a 27,000-square-foot renovation. Neighboring a VONS and a wholesale Sam’s Club in the same plaza, none of the stores, said Cannon, has ever entered into a “non-competition” business agreement with the other.

The Oxnard Police Department receives about one call a day from the Oxnard Wal-Mart, says David Keith, the department’s public information officer. The most common calls, he said, are for shoplifting, followed by parking lot fender benders or other incidents occurring in the vicinity of the plaza.

Whether Measure C welcomes a supercenter, a scaled-down Wal-Mart, or drives away the retailer altogether is yet to be seen until after Election Day. Williams, of CAUSE, is firm in believing that Ventura could do better in seeking out a better retailer.

“Ventura’s problem in land use is they don’t realize its value,” he said. “We should not be too desperate and take the first suitor to come along, so to speak.”

paul@vcreporter.com

Labels: Ventura, Wal-Mart

Current News

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Anti-Walmart in Ventura

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Lompoc Opposition to Walmart

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Ventura's Measure C

Future of supercenters in Ventura contingent on Measure C