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Local residents have no clue how to stop Wal-Mart

  • Al Norman
  • April 9, 2017
  • No Comments

An eastern Massachusetts developer has locals in the Western Mass city of Pittsfield eating out of his hand.

Local opponents of the enormous 196,000 s.f. megastore are disorganized, and city officials are sipping the Kool Aid.

Waterstone Retail, and its public relations group in Boston, has been working behind the scenes for months, lining up a front group, the ???Tyler Street Business Group,??? which thinks a huge Wal-Mart on the former site of a contaminated General Electric factory, is an economic boost to the city.

But one city councilor recently asked the city to have an independent economic impact study done, because there are 25 years of bad history across America which demonstrate that more jobs can be lost than gained when Wal-Mart comes to town.

One former city councilor thinks if he can get Wal-Mart to change its design, the project is fine. “The proposed Wal-Mart at the William Stanley Business Park is not a yes or no debate,” the former city councilor wrote in a letter to the editor of the Berkshire Eagle. “It’s about design. And the design that was presented last summer is wrong for Morningside.”

The former public official wants a more urban design, not the typical sprawling superstore surrounded by a huge asphalt parking lot.

The Berkshire Eagle notes that some residents ???believe that a Wal-Mart Supercenter should not be allowed in the business park, which was designed for economic development,??? and ???some are also concerned a national retailer would drive out smaller, locally owned businesses in that area. ???

This same developer has tried to push a Wal-Mart two times before. They are hoping that the third time is a charm.

To see how ineffectual citizen opposition can be:

http://www.berkshireeagle.com/stories/petition-calls-on-walmart-developer-for-design-that-suits-area,503846

You can also search this Newflash database by “Pittsfield” to see earlier stories on this land use battle.

An eastern Massachusetts developer has locals in the Western Mass city of Pittsfield eating out of his hand.

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Al Norman

Al Norman

Al Norman first achieved national attention in October of 1993 when he successfully stopped Wal-Mart from locating in his hometown of Greenfield, Massachusetts. Almost 3 decades later they is still not Wal-Mart in Greenfield. Norman has appeared on 60 Minutes, was featured in three films, wrote 3 books about Wal-Mart, and gained widespread media attention from the Wall Street Journal to Fortune magazine. Al has traveled throughout the U.S., Barbados, Puerto Rico, Ireland, and Japan, helping dozens of local coalitions fight off unwanted sprawl development. 60 Minutes called Al “the guru of the anti-Wal-Mart movement.”

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The strategies written here were produced by Sprawl-Busters in 2006 at the request of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), mainly for citizen groups that were fighting Walmart. But the tips for fighting unwanted development apply to any project—whether its fighting Dollar General, an Amazon warehouse, or a Home Depot.

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