"Wal-Mart Supercenter a badly done deal"

The following Guest Soapbox by MBCA President David Fick was published in today's Hi-Desert Star. You are urged to read for yourself the documents in question, now posted on the MBCA Website.

In 1992, a newly incorporated Yucca Valley town welcomed Wal-Mart with a gift of a million dollars and a look the other way as 468 Joshua trees were bladed down. This new store on the east edge of town and the first Gulf War ended many local businesses. Another war and maybe another Wal-Mart Supercenter on the east edge of town will bring much more sacrifice from the Yucca Valley business community. The Town Council soon decides if the Morongo Basin needs to serve this global giant from Arkansas. The Surrender Monkeys to Development at any cost say yes. The people who have considered the trade in local jobs, business loss and social damage say
no.

The proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter is about 180,000 square feet with the grocery portion taking 60,000 square feet. That leaves 120,000 square feet for the non-grocery retail, which is 10,000 square feet or 8 percent more than the old Wal-Mart. Although that increase doesn’t match all the hype of Wal-Mart’s needed extra room, the grocery portion is the part that does the damage. Wal-Mart wants it customers that normally visit two to three times a month as a Wal-Mart to increase their visitation to two to three times a week as a Wal-Mart Supercenter. The resulting 400 percent visit increase captures even more non-grocery retail. This grocery outlet becomes a “Loss Leader” and Wal-Mart will subsidize its damage till Yucca Valley loses two grocery stores and a number of assorted retail businesses. Wal-Mart is about its sustainability, not Yucca Valley’s or the Morongo Basin’s.

On May 22, the Town Council received more timely information about Wal-Mart Supercenter’s environmental impact report. Hundreds of pages of studies, reports and memos in PDF form and hard copy. We, as the Morongo Basin Conservation Association (MBCA), got permission to put this information on our Web site. Dr. Philip King’s memo on the urban decay of Yucca Valley exposes the impacts this project would have on retail demand, a glut of vacant retail space and the predatory grocery sales of Wal-Mart. The other reports re-affirm the increase in crime, traffic and social ills that this Wal-Mart Supercenter presents to Yucca Valley.

One of the premises in the Wal-Mart Supercenter’s EIR is that retail growth demand will be 5 percent a year and that the housing boom of two to three years ago would continue. Those abounding “rooftops” were to soften the $30 million grocery sales loss to the other four grocery stores. They were wrong and within a year of Wal-Mart Supercenter’s opening, Food 4 Less and Stater Bros. West (little Staters) would close.

Regarding growth and Yucca Valley, the State Water Project is in extreme trouble of it’s own and Yucca Valley’s aquifer recharge situation has an unknown future. Limited water means limited growth.

For those people who look forward to cheaper groceries (3 to 5 percent less) and more stuff (8 percent more) to buy, I wonder what other trade-off decisions you’ve made in life. The many who oppose this project are a little less selfish and have considered the situation of Yucca Valley’s general health more important.

The next Town Council meeting about Wal-Mart Supercenter is at 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 25, in the Yucca Valley Community Center.

FOR MORE INFO ON THIS TOPIC: On the WalMart page on the MBCA Website. Previous blog posts: WalMart, Yucca Valley.