Had to smile at this headline from The Chicago Sun Times:
“City’s second Wal-Mart approved”
It’s hard to remember, after all these years, that back in the early ’80s Wal-Mart was a totally small-town phenomenon. But then, after it wiped out small-town Main Streets it got hungrier, and they moved to bigger and bigger markets, and eventually became ubiquitous….
… except in some of the nation’s densest urban centers.
Yeah, if you read the story you find there’s more at work here than that simple explanation, such as organized labor flexing its considerable muscle in Chicago politics.
But it still makes me smile. Despites its warts (such as the wiping out Main Streets thing), Wal-Mart is so much a part of modern life that it’s astounding that it is a novelty for some of the nation’s hippest city slickers.
There’s a Wal-Mart in Chicago? Do tell. What will they think of next….
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Well, Chicago isn’t awash with big box retailer sites–y’know, lots of cheap square footage and a huge parking lot. The suburbs have plenty, and you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between some of those suburbs and Chicago proper.
NYC only fairly recently got a Target (or maybe it was just Manhattan that didn’t have one).
Target doesn’t rape the land like Walmart does. Look at how Target turned around Woodhill Mall by not closing and moving down the street like Walwart does. They enlarged their store and helped reenvigorate that parcel of land. Shoppes at Woodhill is now very thriving. Walwart would
have left it as another empty parking lot.