Residents of Livonia, Michigan have been fighting a Wal-Mart superstore, and at the same time city officials who seem unwilling to do much to stop it. The Citizens For a Better Livonia decided to try to at least prevent the superstore from being open all night. The City Council has decided to let Wal-Mart have their store — but they refused to allow it to be a 24 hour faciltiy, as the developer requested. One sprawl-buster in Michigan submitted the following report: “The bad news is Wal-Mart still got their wish of building a Supercenter in the Wonderland Mall region, which means this will be the first Wal-Mart Supercenter in Metro-Detroit. This could spell big trouble for neighboring grocery chains in Livonia, including Meijer & Kroger. The latter has 2 stores in Livonia itself. Even more of a concern would be Farmer Jack’s, as they have been having financial trouble for the past 3 years, including the closure of all 3 stores here in Washtenaw County. One of those stores is in Saline, the area that is currently being threatened by another potential Wal-Mart. The threat of that Wal-Mart store may have been a contributing factor in the closing of Farmer Jack’s store in Saline, even though we’ve got a Country Market store over there. I’m worried that if a Wal-Mart turns into Supercenter it will probably mean adios to Country Market. The 3 grocery stores in Livonia, Meijer, Kroger and Farmer Jack, are all unionized by the United Food Commercial Workers, so this is really bad news for the grocery store businesses in Livonia, and probably neighboring communities, like Plymouth, Garden City, & Westland. Sort of a victory for the Citizens For a Better Livonia Group. It’s probably not going to stop Wal-Mart from developing their first supercenter in the Detroit Area, but the grassroots group did put in some good effort to put a lid on hours, and in keeping their subdivisions somewhat safe.”
For earlier stories on this town, search Newsflash by “Livonia” and by “24 hours.”
