Wal-Mart has lost another battle, this time in Miramar, Florida, where things never got off to the right start for the rapacious retailer. Sprawl-Busters reported on May 17th that citizens against Wal-Mart in Miramar had literally taken to the streets to express their unhappiness about a supercenter. Now, in the early morning hours of September 8th, while most Wal-Mart brass were sound asleep, the City Commissioners in Miramar were voting 4-1 to croak the corporation. It took five hours of debate, but the vote was decisive. Residents in the Monarch Lake subdivision kept the heat turned on from start to scratch, while inside city hall more than 300 people packed the hearing room. Wal-Mart walked away without their needed rezoning of 29 acres of land, and without their 221,000 s.f. store, which we fondly refer to as “big foot.” Just as we have seen a couple of vote reversals recently to favor big box stores, this is a case where the city in June gave an initial nod to the plan, but in September let it die. “There are places for stores like this,” one resident was quoted as saying in the Sun-Sentinel, “and it’s far away from our homes.” Wal-Mart dumped its liquor store and tire center — all to no avail. City staff came up with 24 conditions to impose on Wal-Mart if they built, including limiting the hours of truck deliveries, keeping uniformed security guards in the parking lots — low cost measures that Wal-Mart could agree to. Trying to whip up enthusiasm for their store, Wal-Mart mailed out 40,000 glossy fliers, and got back 1,400 cards in support of their store — a 3.5% response rate. According to the Miami Herald, the glossy mailings were produced by a Texas firm that has done work for President Bush.
During the hearing, Wal-Mart’s lawyer tried to get newly elected City Commissioner John Moore to abstain from voting, because when Moore was on the Planning Board, he voted against the project. But Moore stayed on the Board, saying that he had no problem remaining fair and impartial. Even if he had abstained, the outcome would have remained the same. For more background on this latest defeat of Wal-Mart, go to www.monarchlakes.org. For earlier Miramar stories, search Newsflash by “Miramar.”
