Wal-Mart to Push Southland Agenda

A day after Inglewood voters handed Wal-Mart a high-profile defeat, the retail giant vowed Wednesday to continue its drive into Southern California’s grocery markets, as opponents studied the election for clues on how to fight the company in other communities.

Wal-Mart executives downplayed the significance of the campaign, in which they outspent the opposition nearly 10 to 1 on an initiative that would have allowed the construction of a massive shopping center without the usual traffic studies, environmental reviews or public hearings.

“It’s simply one store, one site in the list of hundreds we work on every year,” said Robert McAdam, Wal-Mart’s vice president of state and local government relations. “It’s not that big of a deal. We’re going to find ways to build stores and serve customers, and while we would have loved to have that location, there are going to be other opportunities.”

But labor leaders and other opponents -- who complain that the nonunion stores depress wages, drive out existing businesses and create traffic problems -- hailed the vote as a pivotal moment in the fight over the Bentonville, Ark.-based company’s expansion into the state.

They credited the broad coalition of clergy, labor, small businesses and grocery workers that fought Wal-Mart in Inglewood as a model that could be replicated in other areas, particularly Los Angeles, which is expected to be another big battleground.

“It puts Wal-Mart on notice that L.A. County is not Arkansas,” said Miguel Contreras, executive secretary and treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which spent up to $100,000 to fight the initiative. “Here in Los Angeles County, they will face opposition. ... The key here was the community coalition that was put together.”

Wal-Mart plans to open 40 Supercenters in California. The 200,000-square-foot stores combine aisles of food with traditional Wal-Mart discount offerings, and some analysts say the company could eventually capture 20% of the state’s grocery market.

Last fall and winter, the impending arrival of the Supercenters played a role in the longest grocery strike in Southern California history, as supermarkets pushed for concessions they said they needed to compete.

The first California Supercenter opened its doors last month in La Quinta, southeast of Palm Springs, with others to be unveiled later this year in Stockton and Hemet.

Wal-Mart officials say the Supercenters bring what communities want and need: jobs, tax revenue and low prices.

Indeed, some cities have enthusiastically welcomed the stores.

But in some places, such as Bakersfield and Hemet, residents have sued to block construction. In others, such as Turlock and Oakland, city and county leaders enacted laws that would prohibit the centers. Los Angeles city leaders are putting the final touches on a law that would effectively ban Supercenters in much of the city.

At the state level, some officials have proposed legislation that would require “big-box” stores such as Wal-Mart to reimburse government for the cost of providing public healthcare to workers and to pay for expensive studies on whether they harm local economies.

But until Tuesday, Wal-Mart had not lost a Supercenter fight at the ballot box. (Residents have, however, voted down proposals for the company’s regular discount stores.) In Calexico and Contra Costa County, the company persuaded voters to repeal prohibitions enacted by local officials. In other communities, the company filed lawsuits against cities.

In Inglewood, Wal-Mart used a new strategy -- one that some said may have backfired on it. Instead of pushing to repeal an ordinance in Inglewood, the company tried to sell voters on a sweeping initiative that would have allowed construction of a shopping center the size of 17 football fields, which could have included a Supercenter, without city input.

It was a hard-fought campaign on both sides. The working-class town was flooded with Wal-Mart-sponsored television commercials, and even free doughnuts and taxi rides to the polls. Wal-Mart spent more than $1 million on an election in which fewer than 12,000 people voted.

On the other side, clergy, labor leaders, small-business owners and national political leaders such as Jesse Jackson hit the streets, telling voters that the measure would set a dangerous precedent for cities nationwide by circumventing local control of the development process. In the end, 7,000 voted against Wal-Mart and 4,500 for it.

“There were so many rallies and pamphlets,” said Robert DeLeon, 29, a lifetime resident of Inglewood who said he had never seen anything like the recent campaign.

“This was really a broad-based coalition involving almost every sector,” said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, which rallied against the initiative.

“Everyone who was willing to burn some shoe leather was welcome.”

Harley Shaiken, a professor at UC Berkeley who has studied the company, said Wal-Mart “may have overreached, and that probably caused a reaction in the community.... I suspect Wal-Mart may not try this strategy any time soon.”

But McAdam, the Wal-Mart vice president, said the company had little choice after the Inglewood City Council tried to block a development there in 2002.

“We had to try something like this if we wanted to get it considered by voters,” McAdam said. “We were told so clearly by city leaders that over their dead bodies would they approve such a thing.”

After the vote, McAdam suggested in a written statement that Wal-Mart had thrown in the towel on Inglewood.

“It is a shame that a small number of voters have determined that more than 100,000 Inglewood residents will have to leave their community to enjoy the shopping opportunities that others have close to home,” McAdam wrote.

“We look forward to serving all of our Inglewood customers at some other location in the future.”

Los Angeles officials, who could vote on their own prohibition on Supercenters as soon as this summer, said what happened in Inglewood had strengthened their resolve.

“This defeat resoundingly says that people care about the type of economic development that comes into their neighborhoods,” said Councilman Eric Garcetti, who is pushing the ban along with Councilman Ed Reyes. “This is going to have ripple effects, big ripple effects.”

Wal-Mart, however, has no intention of backing down, officials said.

“We are not going to get pushed around or bullied by unions,” McAdam said. “We are here to state our case, and we are not going to go away quietly.”