Rallying around Wal-Mart

It’s 8:30 on a weekday morning at the Wal-Mart in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, and the lawn and patio furniture department is crowded. No big sale is going on, just the usual discount prices, yet women and men are cheering.

“Everywhere we go, people want to know, who we are, so we tell them,” they singsong loudly in unison, sounding like a pep rally at a black college basketball game. “We are the Wal-Mart, mighty, mighty Wal-Mart ...”

Mighty, indeed.

The world’s largest retailer is flexing its muscle at the polls next week, asking Inglewood voters to allow construction of a megastore, bigger than 17 football fields and stocked full of groceries as well as goods, without benefit of the usual environmental review, traffic studies, public hearings or scrutiny by Los Angeles’ city planners and the City Council.

Measure 0-4A is the only item on the ballot for Tuesday’s special election, and it’s there because Wal-Mart used the state initiative process to put it there. That Wal-Mart way or the highway approach makes the company the big, bad boogeyman in some circles.

But there is not a hint of fear and loathing among these spirited Wal-Mart associates in their blue vests, smocks and shirts, who cheer at the daily meetings held for the morning, evening and overnight staffs. Others are cheering too: shoppers, some neighbors and the local city councilman.

“The store has done a remarkable job of upgrading the mall,” says Councilman Bernard Parks, the former police chief who currently represents this corner of Southwest Los Angeles. “The first month that Wal-Mart was open, they brought a million people into the shopping center.”

Parks is definitely a booster of this Wal-Mart. His snapshot is on the main bulletin board near a similar shot of Rob Walton, son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, chairman of the company’s board of directors and another recent visitor to the Baldwin Hills store.

The councilman ticks off the recent improvements at the mall, starting with two new “sit-down restaurants.” Mattye’s Bistro opened last month in the old Marie Callender’s building in the southwest corner of the parking lot, and “by June, we’re going to have a Hometown Buffet,” he says. “Those kind of businesses are benefiting from the residual effect of folks coming in from the shopping center.”

Parks, chairman of the council’s budget and finance committee, also believes the city will benefit when tax revenue from Wal-Mart is tallied.

The store’s cash registers ring up 40,000 sales a week, according to manager Michael Hardaway, and that count doesn’t include looky-loos. Some neighboring merchants welcome the additional foot traffic and the business it brings through their doors -- enough that the Payless Shoe Source is “moving next to them to take advantage of all the traffic,” manager Frank Mejia says.

Most competitors hate Wal-Mart because of its low prices -- lower wages, benefits and costs. The company has been charged with forcing employees to work off the clock, discriminating against women, firing employees interested in unionizing and allowing subcontractors to hire illegal immigrants in custodial jobs.

But the criticism is hardly universal. Wal-Mart filled a grating gap in this mall by moving into a five-story building abandoned in the dark of night five years earlier by Macy’s -- which left without notifying mall management or its own employees, who found locked doors when they showed up for work. No major anchor wanted in. Nordstrom passed. IKEA needed a closer freeway entrance. Borders -- well, the rumors turned out to be false. Forsaken by the major chains, with the exception of a thriving Sears and a less-than-trendy May Co. (before the merger with Robinsons), the mall soldiered on. Parking spaces were as plentiful as the empty tables in the food court.

Not anymore.

Long lines form at cash registers. At lunchtime, shoppers and Wal-Mart associates crowd the food court. Forget about finding a close parking space, and if you bank at OneUnited you’d better bring your walking shoes.

At the daily meeting, nearly 50 associates stand among the lounge chairs and patio tables. Hardaway, the manager, who is African American like most of his employees and wears a Hawaiian shirt in honor of employee appreciation day, announces: “We’ve got a couple of birthdays in the house this morning. Do y’all want to do the ...” He begins singing the traditional birthday song, only to be shouted down by the associates. “Well, how do you want to do it?” he asks. They shout back, “Fired up.” To which their boss responds, “You guys want to get fired up? Let’s get fired up!” And everyone loudly sings Stevie Wonder’s birthday song.

*

A new source of jobs

Wal-Mart store No. 2960 opened near Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards in January 2003, bringing 450 new jobs to a community starved for paychecks.

“This is a very important source of employment. Unemployment is higher for African Americans than their white counterparts and other ethnic groups,” says John Mack, head of the local Urban League, a civil rights organization dedicated for nearly a century to opening up jobs for black Americans.

The league helped to screen potential employees before the store opened, and that relationship has continued. In fact, Wal-Mart recently contributed $35,000 as a sponsor of the organization’s annual banquet.

“We as a community have faced a longtime tough challenge of attracting major anchor stores to the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw mall,” Mack says. “That’s been an ongoing drama. One of the big issues in the aftermath of the civil unrest in 1992, when Rebuild LA and others conducted surveys, one of the major issues that residents of the community talked about was the absence of supermarkets and major stores that would provide affordable prices and quality goods.”

He’s been in the store a couple of times. “I bought an electric razor there,” he says. “I got it at a good price.”

Good prices, yes, but not without controversy.

Mack, who is not involved in the Inglewood debate, met with leaders of organized labor who during the planning phase expressed their opposition to the Baldwin Hills store. He cautions: “It’s important for Wal-Mart to recognize that Los Angeles is an expensive place to live and work.” Calling for reasonable wages and benefits, he adds, “At the same time, we take the position that it is better to have people working than unemployed.”

He doesn’t need to preach that to Willie Cole, known inside and outside of this Wal-Mart as “Miss Willie.” On this Hawaiian-themed employee appreciation day, she wears a florid shirt in a green and white print of hot-sauce bottles.

“The bottom line is when I get up in the morning and I come here, it’s because I have a job,” she says, explaining that she had been jobless for nearly two years after being downsized by a telemarketer that went out of business. One of the store’s first employees, Miss Willie helped set it up before it opened. Then she worked as a cashier. She now heads the store’s philanthropy effort, is a part of the risk-management team, does public relations, and was recently promoted into the management- training program.

This morning she arrived at 7:45, but some days she gets in as early as 6 to meet her schedule as a full-time college student studying business. Before long, the phone is ringing in her tiny “office” with its folding chairs. She hears from recipients of the store’s Good Works program and from those who seek donations. At the morning meeting, she says, “I want to let you guys know that we made some donations yesterday. Year to date, we’ve given away over $55,000.”

Miss Willie hands out the checks. “You name it and I’ve donated money to it,” she says. “The Children’s Collective, a lot of the schools, Crenshaw, 74th Street [Elementary], L.A. High, Dorsey [High School], Hillcrest [Elementary] ... the United Negro College Fund, the Pan African Film Festival.” Most checks are small, she says, “to spread the money out to different organizations.... Instead of giving $5,000 to one organization, giving $500 to 10 would be something ... we’d like to do.”

That job has landed her in a Wal-Mart television ad seen nationwide. Yes, that’s Miss Willie, a middle-aged black woman and mother of two college-educated daughters. There she is, standing behind her alma mater, Crenshaw High School, in the agricultural section where the fruit trees grow, a recipient of Wal-Mart’s environmental grants. There she is in the store in her blue vest, saying, “Here in this part of L.A., our community has been overlooked by a lot of organizations. But when Wal-Mart came in, they let us know that they cared.... Wal-Mart has revitalized this corner. They moved into a building that has been empty for over five years....”

*

The ripple effect

Indeed.

“I was here when it first opened last year. Our sales went sky high,” says Koreena McCoy, manager of the Hot Dog on a Stick in the mall’s food court, where Wal-Mart employees cluster at tables for lunch.

Another manager, Nelson Beltran of Shiekh’s, a shoe store where the new black-and-white Jordans are already sold out, says Wal-Mart is good for business because “it brings more people” to the mall.

Those new customers, it turns out, aren’t shopping everywhere.

At the Radio Shack, business is “down 30% because they also sell electronics,” explains manager Lou Haque. He points to a vendor who sells picture frames for $15. Wal-Mart, he says, sells them for $2. “They should be individually located ... like the way Costco is.”

Price comparisons generally work to Wal-Mart’s advantage, but when the Baldwin Hills store doesn’t have the book a shopper is seeking, “they send people down here, which is really cool,” says Daniel Banks, assistant manager at Waldenbooks. Meanwhile, Banks and other mall employees shop at Wal-Mart.

“It’s bringing lots of traffic and taking up lots of spaces in the parking lot. A lot of people are complaining,” says “Mr. Gary” Bekarian, manager of Piacci, a men’s fashion store. But he buys cat food there.

One of his customers, Annie Moore, a missionary who visits nursing homes, shops at Wal-Mart “because they’ve got good sales. I even own a [Wal-Mart] credit card.” She buys dog food, toilet paper and stockings there. “They way things are now, everybody’s looking for a deal.”

As she browses, an associate of Bekarian chimes in. “It’s driven business away. I will not shop there,” says Rhonda Smith. “We’re a high-quality men’s fashion store. They [Wal-Mart customers] come here and they think they can get the same quality [for Wal-Mart’s prices].”

Those sentiments don’t faze Miss Willie, who lives between the Baldwin Hills store and Inglewood. She saves her disdain for community leaders who are campaigning against the ballot measure 04-A.

“These people can say what they want. They get in their Mercedes and they get on the freeway and they drive home. And they talk about what they want to do for the community while everybody else sits down here and nobody has a job.”

Back at the morning meeting, Miss Willie asks community affairs manager Peter Kanelos to lead the last cheer. He hollers: “Give me a W! Give me an A! ...”