Fight was a losing battle

Residents and businesses in two nearby communities fought Wal-Mart’s coming and lost.

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

There used to be an apple orchard and a farm across the road from Beth Ramsey’s house.

But in March 2003, the Wal-Mart supercenter on East State Street opened its doors. Now Ramsey, a Salem Township, Columbiana County, resident, can look across Butcher Road into the city of Salem and see the expansive back of the 183,000-square-foot giant.

There is no orchard now — there is still a field between Butcher Road and the store, but there is nothing in it to obstruct her view. A promised buffer zone — a mound and pine trees — never materialized, said John Wilms, a Salem Township trustee who was there nearly 10 years ago along with township residents who were against the building of that Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart was buying 83 acres of land. The landowner wanted it annexed to the city of Salem, and Salem wanted the annexation as well. The Columbiana County commissioners granted it, and though township trustees appealed that decision to the county common pleas court, they lost.

So today, Ramsey can see and hear the trucks as they unload merchandise behind the store.

“We don’t need night lights at our house,” she said, laughing a little. But back in 1999, many residents in Salem Township, population 5,200, weren’t finding the prospect of a giant Wal-Mart to be at all funny.

Ramsey and other residents protested the building of the store and trustees sided with them, Wilms said. When that seemed not to matter, the trustees tried to at least keep the acreage in the township so it could get some revenue from the taxes.

The court sided with the commissioners and approved annexing the property into Salem, because the city could provide sewers and water for the store and the township could not, Wilms said.

So the township got Wal-Mart for a next-door neighbor — the city line ends at Butcher Road.

It also got the increased traffic and the bad roads, said Wilms — and no tax revenue.

That’s the way it is, say Wilms and Ramsey, when a small community tries to fight a giant such as Wal-Mart.

“Salem Township doesn’t have a lot of money,” Ramsey said. “We tried, but we were overpowered.”

Now, another community is wary because Wal-Mart says its wants to come to town. In Canfield Township, where the stage is set for a battle against the company and residents who oppose a supercenter on land between Raccoon Road and the turnpike, residents are worried about traffic on U.S. 224. It’s already bad, they point out. Will crime increase, they wonder. And residents on Raccoon Road are worried about how the store will affect their lives.

Officials in the township and also in the city of Canfield have heard from many residents who do not want the giant store around, they say.

Wal-Mart has already made one attempt to get a zone change it needs for 14 of nearly 28 acres it wants to purchase for the store. A zone change application has to go before the Mahoning County Planning Commission, the township zoning commission, and the township trustees — trustees have the final say.

When it seemed in October that the county commission was about to recommend denial of the change, Wal-Mart immediately pulled its application.

Then it went to the township zoning commission in November to size up whether that board would be agreeable to amending a county land use plan that cites residential as the best zoning for the 14 acres — Wal-Mart needs it rezoned to business. (The remainder of the 28 acres it wants to buy is already zoned business.)

About 100 residents listened to Wal-Mart’s November presentation. The township board had a lot of questions for company representatives but wouldn’t say whether it would favor such an amendment to the land use plan. The panel told Wal-Mart to start the process again with the county commission.

Wal-Mart is taking its time with its new application, says company spokesman Ron Mosby. But, he said again late last week, the company will definitely be back.

Aileen Magnotto used to live on Indian Run Drive in Canfield Township and now co-owns a grocery store with her husband in Hermitage, Pa. She is familiar with Wal-Mart’s tenacity in locating its stores exactly where it wants them — and with the threat it poses to smaller grocery chains and independent stores.

The Wal-Mart supercenters include grocery stores. With the company’s buying clout, it’s very easy for it to undercut the others.

Magnotto and other business owners in Hermitage protested Wal-Mart’s plan when it closed its South Hermitage Road store to build a supercenter on North Hermitage Road.

The supercenter, which opened in October 2005, is a few miles away from Magnotto’s Shop ’N’ Save on East State Street.

Magnotto said that though some business owners protested the supercenter’s coming, there wasn’t the outcry from residents that Canfield officials are experiencing.

She said the area in which Wal-Mart wanted to build its supercenter was already zoned commercial.

She said she and her husband did protest to city commissioners that the Wal-Mart would hurt small businesses in Hermitage.

Nonetheless, Wal-Mart didn’t have much trouble getting approval from the city. There were some relatively minor zoning issues to resolve, Vindicator archives indicate.

Magnotto said that trying to make a living running a grocery store in the shadow of the supercenter hasn’t been easy.

“Stores like us are just getting the life sucked out of us,” she said.

Yes, she acknowledged, there are gains to be made when Wal-Mart comes into a community.

Wal-Mart contributes to the tax base, and other businesses open on its coattails.

She contends, though, that those gains aren’t enough to offset the harm the store does to existing businesses.

She said Wal-Mart is more than a mere competitor.

“There’s no way you can beat them on price. If I lower a nickel, they’ll lower a dime,” she said, citing the company’s wealth and buying power.

What she said people don’t realize, though, is that Wal-Mart typically lowers prices on a few key items to make sure there is a perception prices are lower.

She said she thinks they are also lowering food standards. An example, she contends, is meat that is brought in from factory farms.

She said she visits farms so her store can offer grass-fed, farm-fresh, hormone-free meat.

She said Shop ’N’ Save also prides itself on offering fresh produce, fresh pasta and healthy soups.

But if people support the store only when it’s time to buy meat or produce, the store won’t survive, she said. Then, she said, people are going to run out of choices on where to buy that meat and produce: They’ll have Wal-Mart or a small, expensive specialty food store.

She also said she believes that the smaller grocery stores usually offer more management positions and better wages to their employees, too. Those higher wages get reinvested in the community.

“They [Wal-Mart] do not give back to the community like we do,” she insisted. “They take money out and send it to Arkansas.”