An Unwelcome Neighbor
Walmart is trying to build in our neighborhood. Not one of those cute little Walmarts you see on the highway — this would be the biggest Walmart in Texas. Two stories, 225,000 square feet (1000 times larger than Erwin House). They want to keep it open 24 hours. The ass end of a 3-story parking garage would face the street. Not a highway, a street. Semis hauling cheap sweatshop merchandise would drive past houses and churches, and wait at a light between our grocery store and our Junior High.
Walmart has been true to its icky reputation in dealing with the neighborhood. I won’t detail every underhanded thing they’ve pulled, but this one is particularly disgusting. A valiant group (RG4N.org) representing residents passed out surveys to what must have been about 10,000 homes during the worst ice storm in years. At the same time Walmart tried to skew the results by running a push-poll. A push-poll is a fake poll where you try to change someone’s opinion. (Here at the Erwin House we call that “lying” and it is punishable with timeout and no hot chocolate.) In this push-poll, Walmart called our neighbors over and over until they answered. Then asked them if they like the big cuddly-wuddly Walmart. If they say no, they get lectured on why Walmart gets to build anyway just because they say so how ’bout that?
Somebody taped the call.
Count me as never, never shopping at Walmart again.
I hope you can ward them off but unfortunately Wally-world seems to get their way in Texas. Austin is the only blue dot in the state, I wonder if it will help.
I cannot imagine a 2 story Wal-Mart. What the heck more can they sell?????
I’m really beginning to loathe Walmart. They are doing the same thing where I live. We already have three stores here, and now they want to open a “super-store” in a very prestigious, historical part of town. There’s been endless protesting, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I truly feel for you.
We successfully stopped them in our town, but to be honest their under-handed tactics is what did them in. Just to name a few: Illegal soil sampling without Costal Commission approval and a push-poll that started at 5:00 AM in the morning!! I personally got more than a half dozen phone calls between 5 and 7 in the morning until I got up and answered the phone. They out spent their opponents on a Wal-Mart ballot referendum something like 10 to 1 and still lost.