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....February 16, 4:25 PM |
| Big Box Breakthrough? Study Shows Support For Wal-Mart Growing Within New York City
By ANDREW MOESEL Just across the eastern Queens border, a few turns off Francis Lewis Boulevard, sits the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, a typical American shopping center made up of towering white, square structures. Inside, shoppers shuffle between brand name stores – H & M, Aldo, Dakota Watch Company – walking on shiny marble floors with bags full of often-pricey merchandise.
But on the outskirts of the mall, other customers are having a very different shopping experience. They troll through wide aisles searching shelves for low prices, filling bin-like carts with life necessities: on the Saturday before the blizzard, it’s salt, shovels and canned goods. The store is a Wal-Mart. K-Mart used to own the property until 2002, when its store was closed along with roughly 250 other locations the company deemed “under-performing.” Wal-Mart bought the building in the spring of 2003 and quickly rejuvenated it, modifying the loading docks and trucking bays, upgrading the parking lot and altering the front entrance. The improvements were made to conform to Wal-Mart’s highly efficient retail distribution system, which delivers goods faster and cheaper, ultimately slashing a few pennies off K-Mart prices. Those low prices have attracted Queens residents, who make up 70 percent of the store’s customers, according to a company study. Green Acres demonstrates Wal-Mart’s ability to adapt to the urban landscape. And yet while less than a mile away from the Queens border, Wal-Mart has been unable to put its blue and white stamp on any property in New York City. Despite apparent consumer support for a Wal-Mart within New York City, many officials and organizations have rebuffed every effort to open the big box retailer, sometimes casting it as the embodiment of a bad corporate neighbor. The question is whether the allure of the lowest possible prices ultimately will trump people’s feelings about the consequences of selling a bottle of soda just a little bit cheaper than anyone else. Always Low Prices Often the media refers to Wal-Mart as “the largest retailer in the United States.” That’s misleading. Wal-Mart is actually the largest company of any type in the history of the world. It has over 1 million employees and grosses more revenue than its next four competitors combined. ExxonMobil made more money overall last year, but had to post the best performance on corporate record to do so. Wal-Mart has forged its empire by sticking to one simple principle: We can sell whatever you can, but we’ll sell it for a little less. The volume of products sold at Wal-Mart, combined with a mastery of supply chain-management, has allowed the company to consistently undercut the competition. With the cost of living running amok in New York, the Wal-Mart philosophy seems to appear more attractive to city residents. In a Quinnipiac poll released earlier this month, 51 percent of New Yorkers would support opening stores in New York City. Of more than 1,000 New Yorkers surveyed, 70 percent at least partially believed that the lower prices would benefit people who shop there. Mia Masten, regional director for Wal-Mart corporate affairs, said the competition from Wal-Mart would impact all prices in the business community. A store would also generate new jobs and tax revenue, she said. In all the stores encircling New York City – Uniondale, Secaucus, Westbury, and more – Wal-Mart sold $95 million in goods last year to city residents alone, Masten said. “We believe New York City is a very viable market. We know from our existing stores and competitors that this is the case,” Masten said. “We also know that having a store in New York City would provide our customers with more convenience to everyday low prices on the products they need and want.” The Real Cost? But at what price do those low prices come, many city officials ask. Critics argue that Wal-Mart cuts costs by skimping on pay, healthcare options and fair labor protections. There are many stories about store managers, spurred by pressure to lower costs, who have locked employees into stores overnight to continue working off the clock. U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Kew Gardens) said Wal-Mart employees often rely more heavily on government sponsored medical care, which means consumer savings could be eaten up by higher taxes to fund federal programs. He also feared that Wal-Mart could drive out the smaller businesses that have long characterized New York. “They have as part of their corporate model quite literally the driving out of competitors. They have to start treating workers better and not passing along the cost,” Weiner said. “They have a long way to go. Up until now, they’ve seen us as a marketing campaign, but they have to take seriously the things that their critics are saying.” Communities often are polarized when confronted with Wal-Mart and its business model, raising in people an almost unique inner dialogue about the moral implications of their shopping behavior, said Charles Fishman, the author of “The Wal-Mart Effect,” a recent best-selling book about the company. And yet, Fishman found a study that showed that even people who hate Wal-Mart shop there occasionally during the year. In the end, there are no easy answers when it comes to Wal-Mart, Fishman said, and it will be up to New Yorkers to decide on a strategy that works. “I think Wal-Mart has a lot to offer the City of New York, but people have the right and the responsibility to understand what Wal-Mart’s impact will be in the community and manage it entry,” Fishman said. “That’s what zoning is for.” |
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