Tackling Wal-Mart takes Oregonization

PORTLAND — Nothing I have written in the past three years has drawn the response of a Feb. 17, 2004 column deploring the Wal-Marting of America. I still get e-mails from people who have seen it on various Web sites, usually asking how to stop a Wal-Mart in their town.

My answer is simple: Organize.

It is possible to beat the Wal-Mart lawyers and shortsighted local politicians who see immediate property taxes but ignore the long-term flight of local businesses.

The Arkansas behemoth is having trouble right now in Oregon, where a combination of land-use laws, neighborhood activists and a few farsighted politicians are placing hurdles in the expansion path. Wal-Mart isn't on its knees, but it has some bloody shins.

The retail giant is forced to go into the Portland metro area in order to expand in Oregon. Simply put, that's where the people live; the company has already saturated downstate Oregon.

There are only two Wal-Marts in the Portland area (encompassing Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties), to serve 1.5 million people. Wal-Mart has 27 downstate stores for the state's remaining 1.9 million people.

Issues that drive opposition in urban areas are not as important in rural areas, where low-wage jobs are more prevalent, shopping choices are not as varied as in the Portland area, and traffic isn't as clogged. Some downstate areas welcomed Wal-Mart, others couldn't muster the organization to stop it.

An exception to downstate acceptance may be Bend, where Our Community First has organized to fight a third Wal-Mart in Central Oregon; at this point, it has won some delays but no final decision.

The key to opposition is organization on multiple fronts.

Neighborhood organization is essential. In the Portland area, each proposed Wal-Mart has generated Web-based neighborhood opposition, linked to other groups with similar issues. Petitions are circulated, rallies and fund raising planned. In Portland's Westmoreland neighborhood, the local True Value Hardware generated more than 500 signatures in less than two weeks, just from walk-in customers.

Alliances with organ-ized labor are important. Nationwide, Wal-Mart stores pay an average of $9.68 an hour, compared with $12.28 for all retail workers, and $16 for rival Costco. (In Oregon, Wal-Mart's average wage is $10.09). Many workers don't get a 40-hour week, keeping them at or below the poverty line. Unions worry that they drive down wages at competing stores.

Wal-Mart is a fervent foe of unionization. Common goals make strange allies — many small-business owners are also non-union, but their fear of Wal-Mart competition cozies them up to the unions.

Organization ultimately culminates in political pressure, and at least in some cases it appears to be working in the Portland metro area. Foes of a Beaverton-area Wal-Mart got their state senator to amend a land-use bill to allow them to block the proposed store by arguing an adverse impact on small businesses. The amended bill passed the Democratic Senate by a single vote but was rejected in the Republican House, throwing its fate into a conference committee where it is still pending.

Gresham opponents bought time when the city's urban-renewal commission purchased the site Wal-Mart had planned for a supercenter. Opponents, operating as GreshamFirst, haven't popped the champagne — they are gearing up to fight other site proposals and pressure the City Council to evaluate economic impacts of any Wal-Mart.

Working along with citizen opponents is the effect of Oregon's land-use laws, in particular urban-growth boundaries similar to those in Washington. It is very hard for Wal-Mart to find huge chunks of open land for its acres of parking and big-box stores; land inside the urban-growth boundary is increasingly rare.

The company is actually working on designs that take less space for parking and the store footprint. The proposed Westmoreland-area store has two stories of underground parking, two floors above. It's still a Wal-Mart, and neighbors still reject it, but the footprint is smaller — less than eight acres.

Land-use rules outside the urban-growth boundaries typically restrict the type of businesses that can locate there — and the typical sprawling Wal-Mart doesn't qualify, forcing it into the land-scarce urban center. Other obstacles include pedestrian-friendly city building codes, decidedly unfriendly to a typical Wal-Mart.

Many of those land-use and zoning rules were established at a time when Oregon led the nation in farsighted environmental planning. With the state reeling from rollbacks in education finance, unemployment and attacks on land-use laws, it is good to be able to add a recommendation to those who wonder how to fight a Wal-Mart in their neighborhood.

In addition to "organize," perhaps I should be adding, "Oregonize."