Monroe after Walmart?

Published 12:01 am Monday, January 17, 2011

MONROE — The city hopes to see more jobs and sales tax revenue with the arrival of Walmart.

Downtown mom-and-pop shop owners fear the city of 17,000 could lose part of its identity from traffic congestion and competition with the big-box store.

“You don’t walk into a Walmar

t and say, ‘Wow, I feel like I’m in Monroe,’” said Andrew Abt, owner of Sky River Bakery at 117½ W. Main.

The reality likely will be change for Monroe and an economic boost. According to other communities and experts, Walmart has helped attract other chain stores.

&#

8220;Our downtown is thriving,” said Joe Irvin, planner for the city of Sequim. Walmart opened in 2004 in the town of about 6,000 people on the Olympic Peninsula. Some businesses have closed since then, but Walmart helped attract others that saw an opportunity.

“We have new businesses popping out like Dress for Less and a Grocery Outlet within the last month,” Irvin said.

There is still a long way to go before Walmart arrives in Monroe. The site at N. Kelsey Street and Chain Lake Road is less than a mile from downtown.

Some downtown business owners and others in the community have started complaining at City Council meetings, asking them to reconsider.

At last week’s meeting, about 10 people spoke against the store. Twenty of 33 people in attendance wore “No Walmart in Monroe” stickers. Earlier this month, a group calling itself the Monroe Preservation Action Committee started an online petition seeking to reduce the size of the store.

City staff have less than 90 days to get the council’s approval for the development agreement. It is expected to go before the council in February. Construction can’t begin until a agreement is approved.

Sam Wirsching, owner of Sam’s Cat and Dogs at 202 N. Lewis St., said he worries about additional traffic. He worries shoppers might be less willing to bring their business to Monroe’s six-block downtown.

“Why stop in downtown?” Wirsching said. “People will follow the line to Walmart.”

If that causes businesses around him to close, he would have to move to avoid the same fate, he said.

“Having a Walmart here is my biggest fear,” he said.

Chain of change

Walmart and big chains are part of a transformation reshaping retail across the country, said Emek Basker, a University of Missouri economics professor who has conducted several studies on Walmart over the years.

“The decline of mom-and-pop stores, and the jobs they provide, is going on everywhere,” she said. “If it weren’t Walmart, it would be some other company.”

Walmart is not the cause but a symptom of this change. Chains also are replacing small bookstores, home-improvement stores and toy stores, for instance. “The underlying reason for the growth of these mega-chains is improvements in technology that make chains more efficient to run,” she said.

While she has not studied the creation and loss of jobs in relation to Walmart recently, a study Basker conducted of counties where Walmarts opened from 1977 to 1999 showed that, on average, the jobs Walmart creates in a county are offset by losses. In other words, for every 100 new jobs the big retailer brings, 50 jobs at existing businesses are lost.

Walmart has also done studies of the effects it has on local mom-and-pop stores. Even if it’s true some businesses closed because of them, others took their place.

“We help business thrive,” spokeswoman Tiffany Moffatt said. “Communities look for Walmart as a solution.”

About 30 Washington cities had new Walmarts open since 2004, including Arlington, Everett and Port Angeles. Statewide, Walmart collected $230.8 million in sales taxes for 2010 and paid more than $37.3 million in other state and local taxes, according to company numbers.

In Sequim, 2010 sales tax revenue from Walmart and other stores, including Home Depot and Costco, was $2.3 million . This helped balance the 2011 general fund of $7.9 million, said Irvin, the city planner. In 2003, a year before Walmart arrived, Sequim’s sales tax revenue was $1.2 million.

On the Tulalip Indian Reservation, the situation is a little different. The relationship the store has with Quil Ceda Village is of a tenant, with the tribal confederation as landlord, manager Steve Gobin said.

The Tulalip Tribes do not receive sales-tax revenue, only rent. Walmart arrived the same time as Home Depot in 2000. Having two anchor tenants of that stature was seen as key to the shopping center. That’s because big-box stores help develop the infrastructure that attracts more stores. Quil Ceda Village helped the tribes lay a foundation for developing their casino, hotel, outlet mall and amphitheater.

“If Walmart leaves, it will leave a big hole in the community,” Gobin said.

Preview in Pullman

Perhaps the city with the most similarity to Monroe is Pullman. A new Walmart opened last October in that Eastern Washington city of about 28,000 people.

The grand opening came after years of contentious city council meetings, hundreds of letters to the city and the creation of community groups taking up each side of the debate.

When Walmart submitted its environmental impact study, the city determined the proposal was not likely to have an adverse environmental impact, said Pullman public works director Mark Workman.

As in Monroe, one group argued that the store would create more traffic congestion than the city could handle. The Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development appealed the city’s decision to the Whitman County Hearing Examiner in September 2006.

The hearing examiner upheld the city’s decision but also said Walmart had to pay for two traffic signals — at $200,000 each — to mitigate congestion, Workman said.

The Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development took its fight to the State Court of Appeals in 2008. The group lost, and Walmart was cleared to build.

During this time, another group formed supporting Walmart. It calls itself Businesses and Residents for Economic Opportunity.

“In reality, most local businesses were in favor of Walmart,” Workman said.

It is still too early to say how other businesses are being affected. Reports are mixed, city supervisor John Sherman said. “We are pleasantly surprised traffic has not been as bad as anticipated.”

There is one big difference between Pullman and Monroe, however. Pullman lost most of its downtown businesses in the early 1980s.

Fear downtown

Baker Andrew Abt is not against Walmart coming to Monroe, but he fears a store that large has an unfair advantage over downtown businesses. He would not compete directly with the retailer, but he could be hurt if small businesses close and the city loses a reason for people to shop downtown.

At Carniceria y Panaderia Vallarta, a Hispanic grocery at 115 E. Main Street, plans are in the works to add a tortilla shop to compete with Walmart, manager Jose Perez said. “I will spend money that I don’t have just to see if I survive,” he said.

It is too early to speculate about how the city could be affected, Monroe Chamber of Commerce General Manager Kim Probst said. Downtown Monroe is seeing a rebound, with three new businesses opening in the past three months and another one relocating there.

Both chambers of commerce from nearby Snohomish and Sky Valley said they do not fear Walmart because their businesses do not compete with the store. They also trust their neighbors will shop locally.

Walmart is reaching out to the community to explain the benefits it would bring to Monroe, said Kelly Cheeseman, Walmart’s regional public affairs manager.

The employees will be city residents, and the store plans to join the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. “Our goal is to become a long-term member of the community,” she said.

Walmart expects the new store to bring about 300 jobs with an average salary of $12.82 per hour, with health and dental coverage for full and part-time workers. The size of the store is smaller than the chain’s average. Plans call for the Monroe store to be about 156,000 square feet; the average is about 180,000 square feet.

Alejandro Dominguez: 425-339-3422; adominguez@heraldnet.com.