Roughly a year ago, on February 15, 2008, Sprawl-Busters reported that a proposed Wal-Mart had run into delay in Delano. Wal-Mart’s plans to build a supercenter in Delano, California are tied up in litigation, brought by two local supermarket workers. This city lies about 28 miles north of Bakersfield, along Route 99. The closest Wal-Mart today is in Porterville, some 25 miles away. This community has been engaged in Wal-Mart Wars since at least 2003, when Wal-Mart announced it wanted to build a store on County Line Road across the street from Kmart. This site caused significant controversy, because Delano would have had to share the sales tax revenue from the superstore with the County of Tulare. Five years later, there is no Wal-Mart on County Line Road, and the giant retailer is mired in two lawsuits over the proposed Delano Marketplace. The developer is YK America. The Marketplace sits on 200 acres of land near Highway 99, and will dump more than 1 million s.f. of new retail space into Delano, including Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Starbucks, Chili’s Restaurant, and other smaller retail shops and restaurants. The project also came with its own consumers: 1,000 units of multi-family housing. (The housing portion of the project was later dropped). Delano’s population has more than doubled since 1990, but whatever sales taxes this new project will bring, will also come with the burden of paying for the police and fire costs of patrolling the Marketplace. The whole project is under the shadow of two lawsuits. A group called Citizens for a Better Delano, and a resident, Barbara Kulukjian, filed a lawsuit against the plan in September of 2007 in Kern County Superior Court. Kulukjian told the Californian newspaper she is not against sales tax, “But I’ve lived in Delano a long time, and I’ve seen the city make errors. And I wanted to make sure that the environmental impact (report) was correctly done.” The developer has stated for the record, “If the (environmental impact report) is found to be deficient, it will be corrected and made adequate. If it’s found (to be) adequate, the lawsuit will be dismissed. It’s just a function of time when it will be built.” But that “function of time” could mean many month’s delay. The developer is using economics to sell the project. They estimate 800 ‘new’ jobs will be created, and $1 million in revenue to the city. That revenue figure has ranged as high as $2.5 million, depending on the developer’s numbers. These numbers are gross figures, not net of retail losses elsewhere in the city as Lowe’s and Wal-Mart force other retailers out of business. The revenues also do not account for the municipal costs of providing the Marketplace with services. The city manager told the newspaper that Delano loses $200 million in sales a year when residents leave Delano to shop in Bakersfield. “This town is dying for quality commercial developers,” the city manager told the Californian. “We believe the developer is capable of constructing the project and getting it going here. We need these lawsuits to be settled or dismissed so we can get going with our project.” The second lawsuit was filed by Inspire Properties LLC, a retail site near the proposed marketplace. But this second lawsuit is apparently in settlement discussions. “We’ve got to make certain that our project isn’t going to be compromised by whatever they’re doing at the Delano Marketplace,” said the attorney for Inspire Properties. Delano’s city manager said everything is fine with the project, and criticized the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit. “The impacts are mitigated adequately, but not in the eyes of the people who are suing the city,” he said. Last Friday, February 6, 2009, a Bakersfield judge heard the lawsuit filed by Citizens for a Better Delano. Two local grocery stores which oppose the Wal-Mart, are hoping the judge rules in their favor. Delano officials told ABC TV News they are “cautiously optimistic.” Delano Mayor Sam Ramirez claims the first phase of the huge project will create 600 ‘new’ jobs. But at Friday’s hearing, the judge refused to allow the project to move forward, and instructed the city to perform another study of the supercenter’s impact on urban decay in communities surrounding Delano, including Wasco and McFarland, California. Kern County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Twissleman said that Delano’s Environmental Impact Report was fine as far as it went — but it needed to be broadened to see larger economic impacts. The city was upbeat about the judge’s ruling, and said it would be easy to perform the larger study — but the judge’s ruling is yet one more delay in Delano. The case will not be taken up again until next month, or longer, if the city has not finished its report.
Delano residents Rick Vasquez and Mike Young charge that the city failed to do an adequate Environmental Impact Report and failed to consider how the project would impact urban decay in surrounding communities. These lawsuits have clearly frustrated city officials, who think they have got the golden goose by the neck. Residents in Delano are fully aware that anti-Wal-Mart activists in nearby Bakersfield delayed two Wal-Mart supercenters over the issue of improper environmental studies. The courts actually halted work on the Wal-Marts for an extended period due to citizen appeals. The Citizens for a Better Delano plaintiffs, Young and Vasquez, work at State Market and Save Mart Supermarket, respectively, in Delano. Their lawsuit charges that the city of Delano violated provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act when it approved the center in August 2007, and the judge has essentially agreed with them that impacts on surrounding communities need to be studied. Readers are urged to call the Save Mart Supermaket in Delano, at (661) 725-2733 to congratulate Rick Vasquez for the judge’s ruling, and to encourage them to appeal to a higher court if this case moves forward. Then do the same for State Market, by calling (661) 725-0630 and encouraging Mike Young to continue fighting the big box project. Readers should also call Delano Mayor Sam Ramirez at 661-721-3303 x 441 with the following message: “I was delighted to hear that a Judge has ordered the city to widen its review of the economic impacts of the Wal-Mart superstore proposed for Delano. More delay is good. It gives you an opportunity to think through your claims that this project means hundreds of new jobs. If that were the case, why do you suppose other merchants in Delano are fighting you? Do you find it strange that some of your local businesses know they will lose jobs or be forced to close, if this project is approved? The gross impact of this store is very different than the net impact, and once you add in the increased cost of police and fire protection for this huge project, Delano may wish that you had worked harder to delay this, instead of cheerleading it. You will get more traffic and crime — and your constituents will learn that when you make a mistake with Wal-Mart, it’s a big mistake. Wal-Mart is not the beginning of competition in Delano — it’s the end. You might want to focus on maintaining the merchants you have, rather than simply replacing them.”