They will not be burning the midnight oil at the proposed Wal-Mart superstore in Livonia, Michigan. After major community opposition was expressed to a 24 hour store, Wal-Mart agreed to reduce its operating hours. The superstore will be an anchor tenant in the redeveloped Wonderland Mall — but it won’t be open all hours of the night. Last December, the Livonia City Council, over the objections of hundreds of residents, approved the project — but the city’s conditions included that the store shut down at 18 hours per day. “We are pleased that Wal-Mart has chosen to reinvest in our community by building their state-of-the art super center, operating 18 hours a day,” Livonia’s Mayor Jack Engebretson told the Detroit News. “Clearly, this is a win-win for our community.” A Wal-Mart spokesman admitted that the company limited hours against their wishes. “We’d rather not have the restrictions, but it was a request made of the citizens and the city,” the spokesman said. “Eighteen hours is less than optimal. We try to be receptive. As much as you hear that we don’t listen and we bulldoze communities … we are doing our best to work with the community with their ideas of how they want things to be. We think this will be a tremendous development.”
This will be a tremendous project — for Wal-Mart. This project in Livonia was a very bitter fight, but all residents could get out of it was limited store hours. But as one resident said, 18 hours is better than 24 hours. For examples of other communities that got Wal-Mart to (reluctantly) back off their typical 24 hour format, search by “24 hours”.
