Add another town to the Wal-Mart slam-dunk list. The Glendale Star newpaper called it a “shocking turn of events.” Wal-Mart announced this past week that it is pulling out its proposal to build another superstore in this community. It wasn’t that Wal-Mart didn’t think it could turn a nice profit at the store — it was an expression of political reality. “As disappointing as it is…we respectfully ask to withdraw our application,” a Wal-Mart spokesman told the Glendale City Council, after admitting that the Council was not in support of the plan, which would merely have moved the existing Wal-Mart across the street to larger quarters. The city already has empty Costco and House2Home buildings across the street. Council member Steve Frate told the newspaper, “I think they can (expand) at their present location without being an inconvenience to anyone.” After all, Glendale already has four supercenters. “How many (Supercenters) do we need, really?” Council-member Manny Martinez said. Mayor Elaine Scruggs added that Wal-Mart was not the best use of the land. “This project was going to bring neither the kinds of jobs we want nor new revenue,” she said. “It did not meet any of our economic development objectives.”
The saturation of Glendale has apparently reached its limit in some minds. Neighbors in Glendale are also fighting a Target that wants to hop-scotch from one location to another. The Mayor of Glendale has it right when she says that Wal-Mart did not satisfy any economic objectives for the city. The superstore proposal did not bring new jobs or new revenue to Glendale, and so went down in flames.
