From WABE…

The issue now pending in court:  whether the group Good Growth DeKalb (GGD) has legal standing to appeal DeKalb County’s decision to issue developer Selig Enterprises a building permit.

The county says GGD has no legal standing. GGD representatives say, even if the organization loses this round in court, it will take the County to court on its primary allegation: that the county violated its own ordinances when it granted Selig the permit.

And then this…

But DeKalb County lawyers said in court Friday that Selig plans include not only Walmart but also a Ross Dress for Less, Joann’s Fabric and Crafts, and a HomeGoods store.

Okay, I know it stings but it’s good medicine. So temper it with a little sugar and suck it up.

For those outside our city borders who still consider themselves a part of the Decatur community, this morning’s AJC features a fine instructive example of what should have happened prior to our latest Walmart dust-up at Suburban Plaza.

In short, circulating rumors of the big box giant’s arrival in Sandy Springs’ downtown mixed-use district — no development proposal, mind you, or even validated interest, just floating possibilities — got people questioning: “Hmmmmm. We have a vision for what we want that area to become. I wonder if our zoning regulations ensure that’s what we’ll get.”

Turns out they don’t, so the city proactively dropped a 90-day moratorium on land-use petitions to allow enough time to “put its ordinances in line with its land-use plan for downtown.”

Well, howzabout that. Seems so much simpler than what happened here, and that’s for some very specific reasons:

Read the rest of this entry »

Sure it’s the largest of retailers, able to totally up-end entire communities in a single day with its low prices, but amongst the big-box boys in this country, it seems to be Walmart – and not Whole Foods or Target, etc – that’s lately leading the semi-aggressive, progressive charge for more accessible, healthier food.

This morning’s New York Times reports that Walmart has just announced a Michelle Obama-backed plan to lower the levels of sugars, salts and fats in its “Great Value” brand along with the price of fruits and vegetables.  Here are a few more specifics from the article…

Wal-Mart will work to eliminate any extra cost to customers for healthy foods made with whole grains, said Leslie Dach, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president for corporate affairs. By lowering prices on fresh fruits and vegetables, Wal-Mart says it will cut into its own profits but hopes to make up for it in sales volume. “This is not about asking the farmers to accept less for their crops,” he said.

…The changes will not happen overnight. Wal-Mart is pledging to reduce sodium by 25 percent, eliminate industrially added trans fats and reduce added sugars by 10 percent by 2015. Its other plans are less specific. In addition to proposing to lower prices on healthy foods, Wal-Mart is planning to develop criteria, and ultimately a seal, that will go on truly healthier foods, as measured by their sodium, fat and sugar content.

The company says it will also address the problem of “food deserts” — a dearth of grocery stores selling fresh produce in rural and underserved urban areas like Anacostia — by building more stores. And it will increase charitable contributions for nutrition programs.

Now of course, there are aspects of Wal-Mart that will never taste good on the palate of today’s “progressives”, myself included.  Labor practices always seem to come up, though whether WMT is any worse than the other large retailers has been debated here in the past.  And we also can’t ignore the countless instances of communities decrying Wal-Mart’s entrance into their towns and cities.  But honestly, this seems to be more a symptom of the ever-clashing national vs. local capitalism in our post-industrial society than anything else.

So, I’m wondering whether anyone else is beginning to have more mixed feelings about Wal-Mart.  Not in relation to what it can do to a local community, but in relation to all the other big-box stores we shamefully frequent.

Basically, with these changes will Wal-Mart become a more satisfying choice for the left-leaning crowd?

One of the more specific goals to emerge from Decatur’s 2010 Strategic Roundtable sessions was “Encourage a diversity of business types with particular focus on small businesses and businesses that provide daily needs.”

Decatur is well-known around the metro for strong support of small businesses, partly out of desire, but also – let’s be honest – partly out of necessity.  Small businesses, such as restaurants, gift shops and clothing stores can add significant mark-ups on items sold – read: “alcohol” for pubs and restaurants – and  survive on fewer total purchases and square-footage.

For many commodity goods – such as food, toilet paper, etc – mark-ups are so small in the modern economy that these items are generally regulated to the outskirts of town centers, where rents are cheaper and people shop mightily with a car and a “buggie”.  (Sorry, as a native-Northerner, I’m compelled to put that word in quotes.)

But now, some of those big-box players are beginning the move into urban areas.  In what is widely seen as a test-model, Walmart is opening a 3,500 (or 10,000 – reports conflict) square foot store – the SMALLEST IN THE WORLD – on the campus of the University of Arkansas this month.

But how can Walmart, a name synonymous with low-prices – if not necessarily low profit margins, but that’s another story – and big box stores, make that jump into urban areas?  How did they overcome the profit-margin hurdle?

One number, one word: $4 drugs.

According to AdAge, Walmart makes urban stores profitable with its pharmacies and the recent surging popularity of its $4 prescription program.  So from a business standpoint, urban Walmart’s are looking to take market-share from downtown pharmacies, under-cutting them on prescription prices and offering customers a greater and cheaper selection of your “daily needs”.

It looks like the urban store war has just begun.  Walmart’s small store on the UA campus is just the beginning.  AdAge reports that Walmart has big – I mean small – plans to open 30-40 small and medium size stores in the next year, with a particular focus on New York City.

So it’s possible that more “basic needs” will be returning to our downtowns in the coming years, subsidized largely by your prescription drug plans. It’s not the utopian model that many new urban dwellers desire (see Decatur’s partial goal for “more small businesses” above), but it seems to have the greatest promise to bring more commodities back downtown in the current day and age.

If that makes you more than a little conflicted, you’re certainly not the only one.