The Positives Of Neighborhood Walmart - And Response (5)

  • Friday, February 27, 2015

I wanted to reach out to provide you with some information about Walmart’s activity in the Chattanooga area. We can confirm that Walmart is planning a Neighborhood Market store at the corner of Thrasher Pike and Middle Valley Road in Middle Valley. 

Given this news, I just wanted to make sure that you had the facts when it comes to what a Walmart Neighborhood Market means to a community. 

We believe our stores can be part of the solution for the communities we serve. 

The small-format Neighborhood Markets are different from Walmart Supercenters, as you may have seen if you have visited the Neighborhood Market that recently opened in Fort Oglethorpe. 

Walmart Neighborhood Markets were designed in 1998 as a smaller-footprint option for communities in need of a pharmacy, affordable fresh groceries and select household merchandise. The store in Middle Valley will average 41,000 square feet and will employ approximately 95 associates. Walmart currently operates more than 500 Neighborhood Markets nationwide. 

Our Neighborhood Market stores provide customers a quick way to meet all their grocery shopping needs close to where they live and work and are a part of our plan to better serve our customers. 

They provide customers quick and easy access to a wide variety of affordable products – fresh produce, a full grocery department with a bakery and deli, a drive-thru pharmacy with our popular $4 generic prescriptions, health and beauty supplies, select household items, plus a gas station. 

In addition to the benefits to our customers, our small format stores also benefit the communities in which they’re located by generating additional tax revenue, stimulating new investment and economic growth, and providing jobs with the opportunity to build a career. 

Walmart provides good quality jobs and long-term career opportunities. You may have seen this week’s announcement regarding Walmart’s commitment to raising our entry wage to at least $9 an hour in April. And by February of next year, all current associates will earn at least $10 an hour. 

We also offer comprehensive benefits plans for eligible associates that offer medical, vision, dental, disability, life and 401(k) retirement savings. Walmart insurance covers more than 1.1 million associates and their family members with Walmart paying the majority of health care costs. 

And we make it easy to move up. On average, Walmart awards 160,000 promotions per year, with 40 percent of those going to people in their first year with Walmart. In addition, 75,000 people move up from part-time to full-time every year. And then the sky is really the limit, as 75 percent of store management team members began as hourly associates and earn between $50,000 and $250,000 a year. 

Those are just a few of the many positive things that a Walmart store has to offer the community. 

Walmart spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg
Director of Communications

* * * 

Re the "new Walmart" everybody wants low prices.  Ask the folks working checkout, they can't afford anything else. Ask the folks stocking, neither can they. Ask the folks who used to work sock mills in Fort Payne or blue jeans plants in North Carolina. Or the folks who worked the distribution center for Bi-lo on Shallowford Road. Or the Food Lions that closed. We have a newish Walmart in Lookout Valley and as others and I predicted, we lost anchor grocers at the two strip malls nearby. 

More sales tax lie is just that, a lie. How much does the one grocer add up in tax lost by the two that folded. This Middle Valley Store is no different. Are folks going to suddenly buy more groceries in Middle Valley? The answer is they are going to shop where they shop or somewhere else in the same municipality. 

Another thing, look around this city at all the former grocers that folded and show me how many revived or just became another place for faster rainwater runoff. Add the former Walmarts too.   Highway 58 is a fine example of that. It is laughable how folks want to "live out" from the city and have city conveniences. Guess what, you will have city conveniences. And city property taxes if you can see beyond the monthly note what they are. 

Developers have advantage everywhere and the Middle Valley situation is no different. The last election shows it ever so well. People who can vote don't and people who can speak for themselves don't.  If there is any truth to America it is this, we all want to pay little what what we buy and sell what we have for a lot. What we fail to realize is our souls are what go for cheap, snapping up the deals we think we get on the backs of underpaid farm workers, clothiers, and store workers. 

The only reason Walmart is paying their hourly workers more is the groundswell of states raising the minimum wage. I find it laughable the folks that cry employers can't afford that drive such shiny newer vehicles. It's been well know for years Walmart pays management and OTR drivers well. Of the staff that are "full time," I wonder how many more are part time. And I have to wonder, will the legendary checkout lines persist at this store as well.  Maybe the checkout line is how the checkout line came to be in the Eagles' song  "Hotel California." 

I will continue to buy my groceries from who I do, the farmers that grow them. My pants were sewn in Michigan, shoes in Minnesota. Ask the apples and garlic at Walmart where they came from. 

Prentice  Hicks 

* * * 

They are slick - I hadn't heard about these new "neighborhood stores."  Walmart has proposed to raise the wage (just enough) to stop the protests but not enough to live on.  They state here how many jobs they will "create" but not how many will be "lost" when the local stores go under. 

With local businesses - the profits stay in your community - not with Walmart. 

Walmart is like kudzu - it destroys indigenous businesses and sucks the vitality out of the region.
But hey - one stop shopping and a race to the bottom of the economic ladder all in one box. 

Wake-up - shop local and grow your local economy and community. 

Mary Petruska
Wildwood

* * *

My husband and I are stunned at reading and hearing from family that a nice, new grocery store, pharmacy and Murphy Oil station is being chased away in Middle Valley. 
 
My brother, sister-in-law, and their three kids live less than a mile from Ganns Middle Valley School and have not seen a dime of business development in who knows when in that area. They have lived in their home for 23 years.
 
Just drive down Middle Valley Road and see for yourself.  You folks ought to be pitching a fit at the run down places that have been there and are driving property values down.  But to read about people showing up to protest new jobs and a decent looking store is just nuts.
 
My family is too fearful to write anything themselves because of the hateful people protesting. They went to a "neighborhood meeting" a few weeks ago in a church and left embarrassed at how people acted. In a church.
 
The loud-mouth angry people that always oppose jobs must be taken care of. They also must not care how their neighborhoods look either.  Good grief.  Build something new and good in Middle Valley.
 
Amanda Johnson
Soddy Daisy

* * *

Middle Valley is a stable community with longtime residents, multiple generations and one of the highest voter turnout rates in the county. Our quiet, low-crime neighborhoods have contributed to a quality of life that draws people with a variety of incomes and backgrounds, including young families and retirees. We have attracted residential developments and look forward to the new community school directly across from the proposed rezone site. Our new elementary school will grow from about 500 to 980 when it opens August 2016. We celebrate this progress and responsible growth.

 

The proposed rezone site, which includes a farm and residential homes, has plans for parking 168 cars and a 24-hour, 7-day a week, six-stall gas and grocery store. Data informs us this type of business will increase noise, traffic and crime.

 

Until the school opens in 2016, it is premature to consider a rezone that will bring increased traffic and crime until we know children and families are safe first. With the exception of turn lanes, the developer said expenses associated with improving the infrastructure of our two-lane roads will come from the county. Where else in Chattanooga is there a Walmart located at the intersection of two, two-lane roads?

Walmart is planning new stores in a variety of sizes and scope for Hamilton County, and we ask Walmart to please utilize the appropriately-zoned commercial corridors. Hixson has ample commercial corridors mere minutes from this site with adequate infrastructure.

I support responsible development in appropriately-zoned areas, and I ask the commissioners to stop the rezone of Thrasher Pike and Middle Valley Road. A no-vote to the rezone is not a no to progress, just no to this location. 

Nancy Patterson

Middle Valley

* * *

It’s just a grocery store, not a super big box.  I’m not sure I can understand why our commission would vote against increasing our county tax base while not considering implications to the real estate taxes we pay on our homes and businesses.  It appears that a vote against the grocery store is a vote for higher taxes.

 

The county needs money for teacher raises, road repairs (especially after the harsh winter), higher employee health care costs and numerous other growing expenses.  The grocery store at the intersection of Middle Valley Road and Thrasher Pike will provide $500,000 to $600,000 for the county which covers much of the school system increases.

 

Competition and convenience is good.  I welcome the new grocery store and pharmacy and hope other improvements are ahead.

 

Rick Reynolds

 

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