GILROY
– This ever-growing city of big box retail stores will be
getting Northern California’s first Wal-Mart Supercenter, but not
just yet.
GILROY – This ever-growing city of big box retail stores will be getting Northern California’s first Wal-Mart Supercenter, but not just yet.
Gilroy’s business-eager City Council took a one-step-at-a-time approach to the retail giant’s proposal for a super-sized version of its regular store. At a regular City Council meeting Tuesday, Councilmen developed a list of 10 issues they want addressed before likely approving the Wal-Mart project next month.
“We’re not in a hurry to approve, we’re in a hurry to do the right thing,” Mayor Al Pinheiro said. “We’re like a poster child for Northern California (on this issue), but we need to do what’s responsible for our own city.”
The project is headed for the Pacheco Pass Center off Highway 152 and U.S. 101 across from Costco and Lowe’s. Plans are to build a 220,000-square-foot store on a 20-acre lot. In addition to its regular discount offerings, Wal-Mart would sell groceries and offer oil and lube jobs at the Supercenter.
At yet another jam-packed City Hall session regarding the Supercenter, Council voted 5-2 for the month-long continuance. Councilmen Russ Valiquette and Craig Gartman dissented because one of the 10 items to be addressed included a staff analysis of three competing economic impact studies.
The three economic reports include an analysis partially funded by the unions, another one funded entirely by Wal-Mart and a third one done by the city albeit 12 years ago.
City Manager Jay Baksa said the review may take more than one month to do. And, Valiquette, Gartman and fellow Councilman Bob Dillon argued that economic factors should not be taken into consideration since Wal-Mart was going through only an architecture and site review.
“We could have eight economic impact reports, and there will be someone who will disagree with every one and take the author of the report to task as one-sided,” Dillon said. “I reserve the right to ignore the economic reports.”
Dillon joined the majority of the Council in continuing the Wal-Mart proposal to March, after an attempt by Councilman Paul Correa for a formal independent peer review of the Wal-Mart-funded report was dropped.
The testimony
Council heard three hours of he-said/she-said testimony over the environmental and economic impacts a grocery-selling Wal-Mart would bring.
Food worker unions and mom-and-pop grocers have long-feared what a Wal-Mart Supercenter could do to their existing businesses. And those interests arrived en masse Tuesday night.
More than 40 people, most of them anti-Wal-Mart, testified during the public hearing portion of the meeting. Many of them were repeat speakers from the Feb. 5 Planning Commission meeting, which also ran three hours.
The issue drew to the speakers’ podium three former Gilroy City Council members, the president of the United Food & Commercial Workers union, disgruntled former Wal-Mart workers, content Wal-Mart workers and high-profile civic leaders like Jane Howard.
Howard, who is a member of the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, stated that group’s support for the Wal-Mart project. The issue also drew a last-minute comment from former Councilwoman and mayoral candidate Lupe Arellano.
Arellano had concerns over Sixth Street which already is impacted by traffic accessing the retail complexes on the east side. She told Council the city’s plans to divert traffic from the residential section of the street need serious scrutiny.
At least one Council member, Paul Correa, even received a phone call from state Sen. Richard Alarcon. The senator is trying to pass legislation requiring Wal-Mart to pay for independent economic impact studies when proposing Supercenters. Correa said the senator was hoping the Council would delay its vote until more economic study was done.
Horror stories about Wal-Mart’s allegedbusiness tactics, treatment of employees and ability to crush the competition were part of the testimony opposing the retail giant’s project. The overriding theme: Wal-Mart can out price the competition because it keeps costs low with nonunion and out-of-country employees.
“Wal-Mart is clearly a corporate criminal,” said Ron Lind, UFCW’s treasurer/secretary.
“The first thing we’re going to lose is Rite-Aid and then PW market,” resident Sam Miceli said. “We’re going to lose that whole shopping area. I don’t think it’s a good idea for Gilroy.”
Anti-Wal-Mart speakers were consistently applauded by the City Hall audience despite the mayor’s gavel-banging attempts to keep decorum.
But Wal-Mart advocates turned out in force, too, to at least some degree rebutting each of the anti-Wal-Mart claims.
“The union is not a bad thing. We simply don’t need it at Wal-Mart. We’re treated fairly,” said Andrew Ulett, a Gilroy Wal-Mart employee.
The verdict
Breaking from his customary listen-first talk-later approach to Council discussions, Pinheiro spoke before his fellow dais members and asked them to consider delaying their approval of the Supercenter until further information was provided on 10 key issues.
When Wal-Mart lawyer Judy Davidoff told Pinheiro the company was ready to answer and resolve all questions that night, the mayor firmly responded, “Council will make that decision.”
Nearly conceding the project would get approved, Pinheiro said, “Once it’s here, it’s here to stay. We need to take our time.”
The issues to be further addressed involve steps Wal-Mart may be asked to take in order to garner Council approval. The issues also involve using city resources to offset the impacts of a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
The issues, which are in addition to the staff analysis of the economic impact reports, follow:
• Enforcing ordinances against overnight and RV parking on site.
“I think you guys are blind if you don’t think there is a problem out there (at the existing site). That parking lot is an embarrassment to the community,” Councilman Roland Velasco said.
• Addressing what company or companies will occupy the existing Wal-Mart building on Arroyo Circle once the Supercenter is built.
• Demonstrating the difference between Wal-Mart’s “green store” buildings versus the building that is being proposed.
“It’s one thing to say we have an (energy) efficient building. It’s another thing to go the next step,” Pinheiro said.
• Extending the awning of the Supercenter to create more shade.
• Holding ecological classes for children on site.
• Holding seminars on how to compete with Wal-Mart for small businesses that may be impacted by a Supercenter.
• Implementing an aggressive local hiring campaign.
• Using the Calpine Energy company’s model for charitable giving.
“This is an architecture and site review, not a charity extortion meeting,” Dillon said. “It’s not charity if we extort it from them.”
Council will hear the issue next on March 15 at its regular meeting. However, the public hearing on the matter formally closed Tuesday night.
