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Wal-Mart garnered goodwill working with opponents
Wal-Mart's facade and parking lot design for its Wilderness Supercenter calls for tree plantings and a 'scenic walk.'
Wal-Mart's aerial shows its store site (top), without its parking lot and the retail center's other stores. The national park is at bottom right, where Routes 3 and 20 meet. |
By CLINT SCHEMMER
Wal-Mart rarely walks away from a fight. But occasionally, the world's largest retailer can be persuaded to change a controversial policy or decision.
Both lessons are clear from other states' and communities' scraps with the $401 billion company over where it builds its stores. Participants in those fights say they apply in Virginia, where the Bentonville, Ark., retailer has spent the past year battling critics of its planned supercenter in the Wilderness battlefield area.
Many Fredericksburg-area residents recall how Wal-Mart dug in its heels over the retail center it planned at George Washington's boyhood home in southern Stafford County.
"To my knowledge, the Stafford Board of Supervisors never tried to discourage them from building at Ferry Farm," recalls former Fredericksburg mayor Bill Beck. "I think what tipped the balance was when Wal-Mart realized the story had become national news, and it wasn't looking good to people all across the nation. Finally, that sank in."
Wal-Mart wound up building its store at an alternative location about a mile east on State Route 3, and the Ferry Farm site was bought by what's now the George Washington Foundation, one of the nation's older preservation groups.
Beck said today's tempest over the Wilderness Wal-Mart proposed in Orange County could have a similar outcome, no matter how it looks at the moment.
Last week's move by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and House Speaker Bill Howell, who urged Orange and Wal-Mart to pick a site farther from the Wilderness battlefield, "has got to ratchet it up a bit," he said.
"Wal-Mart would have to be awfully big for their britches to go against that. So I'm hopeful that will be a turning point."
Anchoring a 220,000-square-foot retail center, Wal-Mart's 138,000-square-foot store would be built on a ridge a quarter- mile from Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, which adjoins the intersection of State Routes 3 and 20. At least four Route 3 landowners have offered alternative sites.
Yesterday, Wal-Mart's chief spokesman reiterated that no other commercially zoned tract in the area meets its criteria for location and access to Routes 3 and 20.
On Monday evening, the county Board of Supervisors will hear public comment on the proposal by Wal-Mart and site developer JDC Ventures of Vienna. The board could vote that night. Under Orange's "big box" ordinance, a special-use permit is required for stores larger than 60,000 square feet.
COOPERATIVE APPROACH
Eventually, top officials at the National Trust for Historic Preservation think Wal-Mart may listen to its critics. On the environmental front, Wal-Mart has recently "done some very creative things," said Peter Brink, senior vice president of programs.
The company, Brink noted, has reaped positive publicity for cutting energy use and waste, and for pledging--through its "Acres for America" program--to preserve an acre for every acre its projects consume.
The same goes for Wal-Mart's announcements that it will provide better health care for its workers, support a government plan for mandated health care, and settle litigation by employees forced to work off the clock, he said.
"There's been a whole lot of movement by Wal-Mart in good ways," Brink said. "It would be a terrible mistake on their part to proceed with the Wilderness store and not find something that's a win-win for everybody."
Wal-Mart is usually respectful of historic sites, he said, adding that the stores it proposed at the entrance to Hyde Park, N.Y., boyhood home of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park are exceptions.
"With its Wilderness proposal, there really are other locations for the store that would provide shopping opportunities and lower prices for local residents," Brink said, "but they wouldn't harm the battlefield or the national park--and the heritage tourism that comes with them."
In Vermont, where it has generally encountered stiff resistance, Wal-Mart garnered goodwill by locating two stores in existing buildings in Rutland and Bennington. The smaller stores, located in or near downtown, "synergize with local businesses rather than draw traffic away from them," said Paul Bruhn, executive director of the Preservation Trust of Vermont.
In certain instances, Wal-Mart collaborated with preservationists, he said. The Vermont trust took Wal-Mart officials on a tour of the state to show them what it thought were suitable, compromise locations.
That's how the Rutland site was chosen--with the governor's backing. "That's proven to be a good store for Wal-Mart," Bruhn said.
Back in Virginia, Warrenton rebuffed Wal-Mart twice before it opted to build in Fauquier County on the edge of town. Wal-Mart had said its original site was the only one that would work, as it is saying in Orange. "Warrenton held tough, and then worked out an alternative," Brink said. "Wal-Mart got a bigger store."
A DRAWN-OUT FIGHT
In Chestertown, a 300-year-old community in eastern Maryland, the fight against Wal-Mart lasted 10 years, caused communitywide hard feelings and ousted several incumbents from elective office.
There, the governor, House speaker and National Park Service weighed in against Wal-Mart, just as those parties have done in Orange.
At one meeting, a Wal-Mart representative told Mayor Margo Bailey the chain would make an example of Chestertown, adding, "We don't lose," local writer John Lang reported.
An anti-Wal-Mart coalition lawsuit spent years winding through the legal system before Maryland's second-highest court found in the plaintiffs' favor. Wal-Mart appealed in late 2002, but lost. The company wound up building a store in the neighboring county.
Two months ago, the tract Wal-Mart had purchased in Chestertown was put up for sale, said Brenda Horrocks, a coalition founder.
Clint Schemmer: 540/368-5029
Email: cschemmer@freelancestar.com
