Holy cow.  From the reliable Tomorrow’s News Today blog…

Wal-Mart is coming to Suburban Plaza in Decatur. In a move many months, if not years, in the making, Selig Enterprises will finally re-develop Suburban Plaza and Wal-Mart will be the biggest addition. Pep Boys, Eckerd and Winn-Dixie/Save Rite have all closed at the center over the years and few tenants other than Suburban Lanes, Suburban Custom Awards & Framing and Big Lots have remained open.  Last Chance Thrift shop, once located in a nearby former Kroger, opened in 2009 in the former Pep Boys in the center. From sketches I’ve seen, their space, as well as the neighboring shuttered Eckerd will both be demolished to make way for the coming Wal-Mart.

While nothing is confirmed, sources indicate that Suburban Lanes, located below the current center and possibly the oldest tenant, dating back to 1954, will remain open although its configuration may change slightly.

…Attending ICSC’s REcon last month in Las Vegas, A Selig representative told me the store should be open by early to mid 2013.

P.S.  Someone tipped me off to this way back in early May, but I couldn’t confirm.

Ah, there’s nothing quite as invigorating as a real-world story that results in an ultimate clash of ideals.

If you’ve yet to hear, the world’s largest food retailer is now openly promising to put a good deal more “local food” on its store shelves in the coming years, reopening the debate about the role or place of large corporations in the “local food” movement.

If you’ve seen Food, Inc. or found yourself on the receiving end of a “what’s evil about Whole Foods” rant , you are probably already pretty well-versed in this dilemma, which pits the money that large businesses can inject into local and/or organic farms against the often foggy larger purpose of the local food movement.

In the New York Times article, Linda Berlin at UVT sums up the major issue thusly…

“The local-food movement has been, certainly, about taste and quality of food, about providing good incomes for farmers, and also about other things that have to do with building smaller economies so we as a society aren’t dominated by the more industrial complexes,” she said. “This initiative doesn’t necessarily address that.”

If you listen to environmentalist Bill McKibben in his “Deep Economy“, the local food movement originally grew out of a deflated organic movement that felt a loss of purpose when larger corporations jumped onto and exploited that successful bandwagon.  Upon reflection by its 1970s founders, “organic” was too narrow – and reactionary honestly – a vision for what they were hoping to achieve.

“Local food” was seen as a way to tighten the qualities and mission of the movement, which, inadvertently or not, would make it less easily adaptable by larger corporations, who’s primary interest wasn’t in the local communities and relationships that were built around this most basic of human necessities, but the bottom-line.

However, like organic before it, local food’s current image in America has become vulnerable to being co-opted by major corporations, thanks to the natural fragmentation of the movement as it has gained in popularity across the continent.

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Wal-Mart in the city?  “That’s unpossible!”, to quote the great Ralph Wigham.

Of course, nothing’s unpossible when a publicly traded company’s current business model stops offering opportunity for delicious growth.  Mmmm…growth.

According to this morning’s New York Times, Wal-Mart has finally gotten approval to build a store in Chicago’s South Side and has big plans – or should I say “little plans” – to start setting up shop in urban centers across the nation.

If Wal-Mart can succeed in the urban market, that could mean several hundred stores just in major cities like New York, Chicago and Detroit, bringing several hundred million dollars in additional earnings, analysts said.

To fit into cities, Wal-Mart is proposing to make itself more trial-size. It would shrink its stores to as small as 8,000 square feet, about 4 percent of the size of an average supercenter. It is considering formats that are primarily groceries, stores where customers can order something online and pick it up, stores where local business owners can lease space, and even formats like bodegas.

There’s also word that the big-box retailer has agreed to pay its Chicago workers 50 cents more than the city’s minimum wage.

So, here’s your noodle-scratcher for the morning: if Wal-Mart came before the Decatur City Commission and proposed to build the most awesome mixed-use property you’ve ever seen – of which they would be a part – and agreed to pay slightly better than minimum wage to its workers, would you support it?

h/t: Otis White

America loves to specialize its movements.

Some people swear by local food.  Others argue for durable local economies.  Still others see worker’s rights as the most important call to action.

And there’s little wrong with this natural evolution of American thought…just as long as we recognize that at some point, in order to realize the full potential of ANY these individual movements, they really should be integrated.  Otherwise, many of these movements could easily be phased into the very global, industrialized system they each once shunned.

Food writer Corby Kummer’s latest article in The Atlantic, is just another example of this kind of specialized focus. The piece documents his discovery of quality organic selections at a nearby Wal-Mart Supercenter, and the resulting internal struggle to contemplate Wal-Mart as a competitor of Whole Foods.

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The Chicago Tribune is the latest news agency to pick up Sugarland story.  Apparently Decatur CD has touched a nerve that stretches far beyond the city limits.

How much farther can it go?

I’m hoping it’ll escalate to the point were Wal-Mart feels compelled to say something.  I’m drooling with anticipation for a Decatur vs. Wal-Mart death-match.