Gilroy – Wal-Mart has broken ground on its supercenter a month
after winning a lawsuit against local union workers. The store is
scheduled to open in July 2005.
Gilroy – Wal-Mart has broken ground on its supercenter a month after winning a lawsuit against local union workers. The store is scheduled to open in July 2005.
Wal-Mart, 7900 Arroyo Circle, will locate its new superstore at Pacheco Pass Center off Highway 152 and U.S. 101, across from Costco and Lowe’s. Plans call for a 220,000-square-foot store on a 20-acre lot. In addition to its regular discount offerings, the supercenter will sell groceries and offer automobile oil and lube jobs.
The groundbreaking was good news for Gilroy Economic Development Corporation director Bill Lindsteadt, who has shepherded the city’s explosion of commercial and retail business in the last eight years.
“I’m happy to see it under construction,” he said. “It’s going to provide more jobs to the community and a bigger choice of places for people to shop.”
He said the city has lined up a new tenant for Wal-Mart’s current location, but he would not disclose the retailer’s name.
Wal-Mart’s expansion has not been welcomed by all, with some people viewing the recent closure of PW Market as a sign of things to come. Lindsteadt said, however, that there had been rumors about the store’s closure for three or four years.
He acknowledged that the supercenter, which will add groceries to its list of low-priced offerings, will impact other grocery stores.
“The city is growing,” Linsteadt said. “And yes, they [Wal-Mart] probably will impact Safeway and Nob Hill to some degree. But I don’t think it will be anything near the fears that were brought up during the approval process.”
Others are less optimistic.
Nob Hill Foods manager David Urquidez felt the supercenter would “definitely” hurt business. It is a simple logic, really: “If people start shopping there, they won’t be here,” he said.
A manager at Safeway said store policy prohibited employees from making comments to the media.
Concerned business owners and environmentalists packed City Council meetings earlier in the year during the project approval process. City councilmen won a few small concessions, getting the company to agree, for instance, to replace the standard supercenter arcade with an environmental education center, institute an aggressive local hiring program, and instruct local businesses on how to compete with its discount prices.
Unions around the country have fought Wal-Mart’s entry into local communities, at times focusing on environmental issues as a means to block new stores.
Two local union workers filed the lawsuit in early May, claiming the city violated various portions of the California Environmental Quality Act in its approval of a supercenter proposal by the retail giant.
Acting City Attorney Andy Faber described the Nov. 15 ruling as “a flat-out win.”
“They would have had us do a great many things differently,” he said. “There are [environmental] mitigations, but they wanted more. The bottom line is they [the union workers] alleged that we did not follow the proper procedures, and of course we think we did.”
And a judge agreed, paving way for the new Supercenter, just the second to be built in Northern California.
Although Wal-Mart may attract some local shoppers, at least one local customer plans to remain loyal to Nob Hill and Safeway.
Sally Vandeford, a Gilroy resident, said she buys her meats and deli products at Nob Hill and the rest of her groceries at Safeway. She disagrees with Wal-Mart policies that keep “people below living-wage,” noting that she grew up in Fayetteville, Ark., the home of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. She said her family knew Sam Walton and passed up the opportunity to invest in the company.
“Boy I’ll regret that one,” she joked, adding the next moment: “I would not step foot in a Wal-Mart.”
