Note: An earlier version of this post had an error in the headline. It’s been corrected.
The South Milwaukee Walmart debate comes to a head at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
The meeting will actually begin at 5:30 p.m. and will recess until 6 p.m., when a public hearing on the rezoning necessary for the Walmart development will begin. A second hearing on the vacation of 11th Avenue, also necessary for the project, is planned for 6:30.
The City Council meeting will then formally restart following the second public hearing, and the council is set to vote on several items related to the development. They are:
- The rezoning of 222 N. Chicago Ave.;
- The vacation and discontinuance of 11th Avenue;
- The sale and redevelopment of the property; and
- An amendment to the Tax Incremental District #2 redevelopment plan.
Unfortunately, I will not be at this meeting, and I am sorry I can’t be. The reason why is simple: My day job.
I have had an important business trip scheduled for months, and it’s one I absolutely can not get out of. If I could, I would. I just can’t.
In lieu of attending, I plan on listening to an audio recording of the public hearing and meeting. And I have sought, and continue to seek, feedback on the Walmart issue in a number of ways. It starts with this blog, where my readers have led a robust debate on the issue. I’ve also gotten more than 20 calls and emails on the project in the past week, with all but a couple of people opposed to the project.
I appreciate the comments, and I encourage them. It’s part of the job — a job that I remain dedicated to doing the best I can. I bring that same commitment to MillerCoors … and the reality is it’s that job that puts food on my family’s table.
I give a lot to the city, in support of my constituents. I work hard every day to represent the Fourth District as best I can. But there honestly wasn’t much of a choice for me here.
With that in mind, this will likely be the only City Council meeting I miss this year. It just happens to be the most important one.
I wish things were different.
(You can see revised Walmart renderings here. These reflect suggestions from the Plan Commission to improve the front-facing portion of the building.)
South Milwaukee Blog 
Is there no way the vote can be delayed?
Only if there is not a quorem.
The only quorum is the committee. They will not allow a public vote. They’ve done everything they could to keep it quiet until the last minute and then only notified the absolute minimum required by law.
This project was never kept quiet. There has been many articles in the Journal, Business Journal, etc. You can always access the City’s website to see meeting notices. Notices were sent to property owners as required within a certain distance from the development. I look forward to this development!!!
SM did the very least they had to to pass the information to the community. They must know the majority of our population would not have caught the articles and quit with the website. People dont know about that either and if they did, as I did, they would have found year old information. Let’s get real! It was sneaky. If they really wanted people to know they would have at the VERY least updated the signage on the property site. Nobody was against the strip mall idea, which is still there to this day falsely misleading the general public! They all dropped the ball or in my opinion are taking the easy way out. I welcome everyone to watch the documentary live on YouTube “The High Cost of Low Price”. You’ll see the Proud Past and Crumbling Future coming our way.
I totally disagree with you. Once the deal is complete, then the “Coming Soon” sign will appear. This is standard process everywhere. This will be a great development for the City in a good location.
I agree 100 percent with Rick. Not only was it in the newpapers and websites months ago, but it was also on the TV news. I knew about this several months ago and did not have to go out of my way to find it. If people aren’t going to pay attention, there’s nothing the city can do about it. It is completely unfair to blame the aldermen for “keeping it quiet” because they didn’t.
Sure. Replace the signage promoting a strip mall after the fact. Right! Trusting what our city planners advertise is what happened. You two must not live in tbe first district where the neighborhood will be lit up by a 24 hour super store. Thousands of additional cars driving by and grocery carts in your back yard.
See, there you go not knowing what the facts are. WalMart will most likely not be open 24 hrs. Their initial hours will be open at 6am and most likely close at 12 midnight. Any shopping carts left in your yard will be from your own neighbors too lazy to take them back to the store. I did not see you at the Plan Commission meeting tonight when a lot of this was discussed.
Had I not had to work i would have made it! Please post the interesting details.
Most likely they will exercise their right to stay open 24 hrs. when the holiday season starts with “Black Friday”.
Perfect! Triple the traffic
I’m sure all of ye informed must already know all the latest goodness Walmart continues to bring… it was in the paper…
Last week, the New York Times reported that Walmart will be significantly increasing the burden of health care costs it places on its associates. These are people who already struggle to make ends meet. Because of Walmart’s system of scheduling, many are unable to predict how many hours they will work each week and how they will budget for these increased costs to them and their families.
Notably, recently-hired and newly-hired part-time Walmart employees will no longer be eligible for any health care plans. This is particularly troubling as Walmart pushes more and more employees to part-time status.
Walmart has refused to admit how many people are going to be affected by this change, how many currently work part time, or what the increased burden will be to tax payers and communities who will likely have to subsidize health care for many of these workers through public assistance. But Walmart Associates, who are coming together through the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (an organization of, by and for current and former hourly Walmart employees), were able to share how these changes are going to directly effect them:
• Girshreila Green appeared on ABC and CBS Nightly News,
•Barbara Collins spoke out on National Public Radio, and
•Bonnie Shoaf appeared in hundreds of newspapers around the country with this story from the Associated Press
Have you watched the documentary yet? It’s also interesting. FREE on YouTube High Cost of Low Price. I saw a picture of downtown South Milwaukee on it.
Proud Past Crumbling Future!
Every employer has passed the burden of health care to their employees. Mine has gone up every year. No one is forcing anyone to work at Walmart either. so this is a mute point.
The point is the promised jobs arent what they alledge. These are not desirable jobs they are bringing into the community. They encourage our youth to settle for less rather than encouraging them to strive to achieve more.
It’s as simple as this:
* If you don’t like how Walmart conducts business, don’t shop there.
* If you’re looking for a job and don’t like how Walmart treats its employees, don’t work there.
* If you work for Walmart and don’t like the changes they make to your pay and/or benefits, quit and look for a job with another company.
If things are truly as bad as some say they are, Walmart would not have enough employees or get enough business to survive, let alone expand.
Nobody is holding a gun to a person’s head forcing him/her to work or shop there.
I totally agree. I don’t agree with them being my neighbor. I should also have the option to vote on that.
Let’s hear what city residents have to say at the meeting on Wednesday, October 26 at the Knights of Columbus @ 6:30 p.m.
You did get to vote. You voted for your aldermen to make these decisions (whether it be Walmart, Pick ‘n Save, Bucyrus, etc.). The two aldermen from your district voted your wishes in this case. The five aldermen from the other three districts voted what they believed are the interests of their districts (and Alderman Brooks would have voted with the five according to this blog). If you’re unhappy with the way your two aldermen represent you, you get to vote again in the near future.
You’re right! My Aldermen voted with their constituents because we were advised of the proposal. The other districts werent.
I’m sorry but the facts just don’t support your statement. I looked back and the first Journal Sentinel article on this subject was on November 10, 2010. I’ve already listed the other places this information could be found over the past year (without much effort). If people choose to have their head in the sand and then are surprised by things that happen, that is not the common council’s fault.
I disagree. I live in the 4th District and my neighbors are very much aware of this project. Again, I did not see you or any of your neighbors at the Plan Commission meeting where the design was approved and the Planned Unit Development Agreement was approved to be forwarded to the Council for approval. The Council takes the votes and recommendations of the Plan Commisssion very seriously as the membership is made up of a member from each Aldermanic District.
Again, my job, and very sorry I missed it.
Revised renderings look good. It appears that they did everything the Plan Commission asked for.
Most meetings run in a Roberts Rules of Order (newly revised) parliamentary fashion. Majority rules. As long as there is a quorum of the majority, the meeting can continue and voting can occur.
my friends in the Milwaukee Unit of Parliamentarians were giddy that a new version of RRoO was going to be released soon to address e-voting. I haven’t heard from the group whether or not this has happened, but it sure is a nice bunch of people to make a motion with.
I would love to have the ability to vote electronically. And in these digital times, I am surprised this is not more common for local governments. At MillerCoors, I am seldom in a meeting that does not have some sort of teleconference, WebEx, etc.
For Corporate America this is fine….but for a City having a population of 19,000 this would be a waste of taxpayers money….
If one of the other attendees brought their laptop and ran something like Skype, it could be accomplished quite easily (and cheaply). Since we are talking about oral voting, we wouldn’t have to worry about hacking since a webcam would be used and whoever is running the laptop would see Erik’s smiling face! 🙂
Does anyone know how much Innovations Park LLC sold their land to Gatlin Development, and does anyone know the reason why SM is spending so much money (1.8M) to clean up this property?
Margaret, I don’t know how much was paid for the Innovations Park land. As far as the $1.8 million, Erik’s September 6 blog post (Council Backs Walmart Development Agreement…) describes it pretty well. I’m surprised Walmart is willing to pay at least half of the cleanup costs. Most other prospective buyers would not be that willing. If I was buying a house that had contaminated land, I would make the seller pay for all the cleanup or I wouldn’t buy it. It’s my understanding that the $1.8 million value is worst case for the city as the final cleanup cost may not be that high.
Hope that helps.
I don’t know what Innovation Park sold for. However, I asked about the cleanup on one of Erik’s earlier posts. The reason is that one of our illustrious government agencies (state or federal) decided to declare certain substances and / or their disposal in the ground illegal – after the fact. The companies that created the so-called hazard (which as I understand it was legal at the time) are long since gone. South Milwaukee now owns the land. I believe that according to the aforementioned illustrious regulatory agencies the land cannot be transferred or at least developed until it is cleaned up. If SM wants the land used for anything (commercial, industrial, residential) it will need to be cleaned up before building – and any business or person in their right mind would probably not want to take the risk of obtaining land that is an environmental “hazard”. It’s similar to Bucyrus back in the 80’s or 90’s when they had their bankruptcy. Even though they had unused land (north of Rawson) that could have been sold, they couldn’t do it due to the added clean-up costs from years gone by. So, basically in this case the city is stuck with a $1.8M unfunded mandate from higher level governments.
I have a hard time understanding why the cleanup of the land would be as large a scale if used for industrial or even commercial if no food products were being sold.
The cleanup of this parcel includes removing almost 40,000 cyds of contaminated soil. Trucking and disposal costs are high. There was a tannery on that property that had tailing ponds where they disposed of carcasses. Near the corner across from the Pizza Hut was a gas station that contaminated the property due to leaking gas and fuel oil tanks.
Why did South Milwaukee buy the land in the first place? My understanding is the tannery land is for sale. Why is the City of South Milwaukee going to buy it?
Knowing they have to clean up the land why would one buy the land? Let Walmart buy the tannery land and pay for the entire clean up of the land.
Thank you for the clarification on the environmental cleanup. Is it really unlikely the City would be able to attract a different national retailer or development in the near future other than Walmart? Does our CD Director “sell” our city to, say, Kohls (which use to be here), Target, Pebbles, JCPenny? Is Walmart really the only retailer that has big pockets to absorb some costs? It seems “we are” paying Walmart to come here, not the other way around.
For the most part yes. Target, Pebbles or JCPenny would never consider locating to SM due to demographics, etc. JCPenney is closing stores. Sears will be out of business by the end of 2012. Kohl’s moved due to the demographic and modeling study they perform when searching for a sight. Remember, the Lake to our east harbors no residents.
Well… the way i see it, “retail” is not THE only option. Just the easy way out.
Unfortunately big box retailers are only building where they receive “incentives” from municipalities. Cabela’s only builds where they receive 1/2 the cost to build their store. Their Richfield store received $7.5M from the facility to offset the $15M to build the store. Currently they are building two stores this year where municipalities are paying 1/2 their building costs. Target is expending their capital into adding the “P-Fresh” remodel that adds fresh food and anexpanded food line such as was done in their OC store. They are also using their capital to expand into Canada with 200 stores and afterwards expand into Puerto Rico, which has become the hot spot for retailers to expand. JCPenney is struggling and is currently closing stores. The traditional Sears stores will probably close in the next six months due to declining sales. Kohl’s has slowed building new stors and has focased on remodel projects. The reason Kohl’s left SM was that the building did not support the new prototype store size and design, and also the demographics model. I know this because I oversaw the construction of that store and was privy to the info used to select the OC site. Kohl’s and most retailers use a sophisticated model to locate a store based on income, family mix, and potential growth. Unfortunately when you take these into consideration, there ws no growth to the east due to the Lake.
To the point that is constantly brought up that goes something like “if you don’t like their pay/benefits/whatever, don’t work there”:
I submit, with unemployment around 10%, “real” unemployment somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20%, and <25 year old unemployment even higher, where would you propose that the throngs of unemployed go for jobs?
People with few skills or little experience don't have much as far as options for jobs. The current state of things allows employers, especially large ones such as walmart, to offer obscenely low wages and benefits while still getting large numbers of applicants. Most figure that some job is better than no job. This leads to little time or money to get by on, much less any money to afford some kind of training or schooling besides the work experience of some shitty retail job.
Again…how is that Walmart, Pick ‘n Save, Target, Shop Ko, K-mart or Kohl’s fault? I applaud those people who take these jobs because some job is better than none. Many use it as an opportunity to work hard and advance within that company thereby earning more money and saving so they can go to school and increase their skill level in order to find an even higher paying job. You imply people are entitled to this overnight. Every job is not a “living wage” job, nor should it be, but it can be a means to getting a “living wage” job.
I agree that not all jobs can be “living wage” jobs, but Walmart pays less than competitors, treats their employees worse on many levels, and uses everything that it can to lower it’s bottom line. Walmart will bring a wash or a net loss of jobs to the area. Either way, the overall amount of money in the local economy will go down due to the lower wages offered by Walmart as well as the downward pressure on wages caused at it’s competitors.
It is the retailer’s fault for not offering a better wage to it’s employees. They determine what to pay their people. If Walmart increased prices by just a few cents ($0.49 per transaction, I’d guess that would be 3-6 cents per item) and applied that directly to wages, their employees would be much, much better off and have a much better livable wage (maybe not a “living wage”, but at least out of poverty level).
I’d rather not have a Walmart in our midst as opposed to having one around. Walmart embodies the worst things going on in our world. Corporate greed with more focus on the bottom line than anything else (especially the people being exploited to get to that bottom line), outsourcing of American manufacturing jobs to sweatshops in China and elsewhere (Walmart alone makes up at least 11% of this – http://www.epi.org/publication/ib235/), discrimination, predatory pricing, abuse of it’s suppliers, abusing public subsidy programs, and on, and on. Not that Walmart is the only one that does these things, but it seems to be the worst and most egregious.
Here are some more good resources to look at:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/the_wal_mart_effect/
and
http://money.howstuffworks.com/wal-mart.htm
http://www.walmartwatch.org
http://www.newrules.org/retail/key-studies-walmart-and-bigbox-retail
http://www.alternet.org/story/151303/five_of_the_nastiest_examples_of_wal-mart_evil/
Thank you.
I’m not arguing any of those points. I am arguing that this is not the answer for South Milwaukee. 27th Street and Howell Ave is not that far to go to achieve all those things. I argue the overall impact to this community in the long term. I am arguing the tremendous amount of traffic this will generate. The crime and public safety, the garbage, the decrease in property values. I support Made in the USA and maybe in this downed economy, rather than letting the Big Dogs run us down, we need to work harder to bring our jobs back and not give in to Big Box, whoever they are.
Don’t tell me, it’s public record, but what were the 7 other proposals considered? Maybe reevaluation of prior proposals is in order, or more effort put into pursuing other options and selling our City: manufacturing, distribution center, office complex… Anything but BIG BOX Retail!
It’s been vacant for 15 years, what’s the rush?
I hate to say this, but some of the neighboring properties may get a “boost” in value due to this. Chris is right, you and your neighbors have options not to shop (But I will bet you will shop there!!!). The development compliments the site and area. A big problem in this country is “entitlement”. I am sure, SMDRE, nothing will make you happy. We do not need more apartments or condos as these add a burden to our school system.
The drainage is already running over, area basements downstream from the proposed site flooded two years in a row, one of the seven bridges washed out, and two others were damaged. Ten acres of concrete will increase the runoff. Chicago Av is already congested and will need to become 4-lane to accommodate the extra traffic. More stop signs will be needed in the residential neighborhoods between Lake and Chicago. There will also be additional expenses for police protection. The city subsidy will take about 12 years to recoup not counting these extra costs.
The jobs are mostly transfers from other retailers in the area, not a net gain. Tax revenue will increase a little, but only at the expense of Cudahy, Oak Creek and Franklin. Before Walmart ruled the world, similar stores paid union wages. Their competition has put downward pressure on all retail employees, and also the employees of their manufacturer vendors. There are a few that will benefit: Walmart pays its CEO the average annual salary of its employees every hour.
I am not against the mega store in a free market, but am against providing public subsidy that benefits a few of the world’s wealthiest individuals. Walmart should pay the actual costs of this development. They should be forced to deal with the runoff issues: using a green roof, pond, and/or rain gardens. This is another example of privatizing revenue while publicizing costs.
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