Poway Walmart News

Let market forces prove their value at Walmart

January 7, 2010
San Diego Union-Tribune

Monday afternoon, I shopped at the Walmart in downtown Poway.

As you know, this isn’t just any North County department store.

This is the famous one, the one that the world’s largest retailer wants to expand into a 24/7 Supercenter.

While I was checking out the cavernous store, I came across gallon jugs of cranberry juice for $4.38.

It seemed like a sweet deal but I called home before pulling out the wallet.

To say my wife is a gifted shopper is sort of like saying Meryl Streep has a flair with accents. To my wife, shopping is a martial-art form, a blend of Russian chess and Greco-Roman wrestling.

“I’ll call (our neighborhood supermarket) to see what we’ve been paying,” she said, after I’d read the juice’s ingredients.

A minute later, my cell phone rang.

“The best they can do is $4.98,” she said. “Buy two gallons.”

There in a ruby-colored nutshell is the genius of Walmart, the world’s retailing superpower.

Just like that, I had $1.20 more to spend. I’d saved money, which meant, according to the new Walmart slogan, I’d live better.

What’s more, this Walmart wasn’t (at least not yet) a Supercenter, the so-called “hypermarket” that includes a full-service grocery store.

According to Walmart, a family of four will save $750 a year if it buys all its food from a Supercenter. (A 2005 Washington Post study estimated that Walmart food saved American shoppers $50 billion a year.)

How does Poway turn its back on that boon to its residents?

With a lot of thought.

A well-organized group of neighbors has formed to hector the council into rejecting Walmart’s expansion plan, which should come up for a vote sometime in the summer.

For months, no council meeting has been complete without several citizens either pleading with Councilwoman Betty Rexford to resign or imploring the council to consider the harm of a Walmart expansion on traffic, public safety and downtown character.

To a council member, that litany of evil might sound a bit lame.

First, downtown traffic, no matter how many headaches it induces, is a good problem to have. La Jolla, for example, has been complaining about too many cars in the village since the time of the Model T.

Bottom line, the opposite of a congested downtown is a ghost town.

To be fair, what sets this particular Walmart apart is the fact that it’s about five miles from Interstate 15 and state Route 67. Not a classic location for a big-box store. For Julian and Ramona residents, however, it’s relatively convenient.

As for the crime issue, expansion enemies tout statistics showing the 24-hour Supercenters to be magnets for nocturnal bad behavior. To turn that lemon into discount lemonade, Walmart might have to beef up security during the night. That’s just good PR.

Finally, there’s the issue of community character.

If a Supercenter is allowed to bigfoot downtown Poway, existing supermarkets will feel the supersized pressure, the argument goes. One or two might be forced to close because former customers are saving money at Walmart.

What makes Walmart such a rich target is its history as a cut-rate store patronized mostly by poor people.

To those who shop at, let’s say, Whole Foods or Jimbo’s, Wal-Mart is dismissed as a soulless public corporation that treats its nonunion employees (or “associates”) poorly, gouges suppliers, destroys mom-and-pops and fails to champion the environment and healthy lifestyles.

But the picture isn’t so black and white.

Walmart, for example, is the largest seller of organic foods in the world, carrying green products like Stonyfield. It’s possible, if unlikely, that in 10 years Walmart will look a lot like Whole Foods. These days, healthy is just good business.

I’d rather patronize Trader Joe’s than Walmart or its warehouse relative, Costco. I like the relaxed surfer vibe of Trader Joe’s, the intimate size — and the tasty samples. It’s an inspired SoCal-style marketing experience.

But if we had a Supercenter down the street, it would be hard not to take those savings to the bank.

Poway has a tough decision. Does it engage in protectionism for existing businesses or does it let the marketplace decide the winners and losers?

Does it, in effect, punish Walmart for offering too valuable a product?

I know what my wife would say to the rejection.

“Are you crazy?”

- Logan Jenkins