STORE HOUSE DESERET INDUSTRIES CENTERVILLE FULL
By day, Norman has a full time job working with the elderly. Such groups are championed by one major force in the anti-urban sprawl battle, the self-professed “anti-Wal-Mart guru,” Al Norman, founder of Sprawl Busters. One Web site provides a chat room for disgruntled current and former employees and their supporters to air their grievances.
In addition to crowding the zoning commission offices, these activists have used the Internet as their outlet for anti-Wal-Mart sentiments. These groups focus on local zoning laws, the area that gives them the most effective way to combat large commercial developments. With names like, “Us Against the WAL,” Coalition for a Better Inglewood, and Friends of Portsmouth Township, resident activists from California to New York and Minnesota to Texas are currently involved in battles with Wal-Mart. By the end of 2004, the company expects to open 220 stores.īut Wal-Mart’s opposition is loud and highly publicized. Morris said, though, that number is only a tiny fraction of projects the company undertakes. In 2003, between 15 and 20 Wal-Mart projects were halted due to residents’ opposition, according to Wal-Mart spokesman Keith Morris. The group is one of many around the country that have organized to oppose the construction of “big box” stores like Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot in their communities.Īccording to Sprawl Busters, an organization that monitors communities opposed to “urban sprawl,” some 221 communities have fought the opening of large-scale retail developments in their neighborhoods and have won.Īnd the groups, usually run by volunteers on their own time, have had an impact. Instead, they sold Frisbees with upside down smiley faces that asked Wal-Mart to “Fly on out of here.”Ĭenterville Citizen’s First or CCF could have any town’s name in front of it. They tried to have a float in the July 4th parade but were denied, Fisher said. The group has done mass mailings to Centerville residents, taken out full-page ads in the local newspaper, conducted calling campaigns to organize residents against the proposal and sold T-shirts at the local July 4th picnic - all on volunteered time. “Something less obtrusive, smaller, not a 204,000-square foot big box.”įisher and his group worry that Wal-Mart would bring more traffic to their city, higher crime rates, more noise and could lower the value of their homes. “I think 22 acres would be ideal for a park or some other mixed use,” said George Fisher, head of Centerville Citizens First, one of two main groups working on building an opposition to the store. The proposed superstore would sit on what is now a 22-acre alfalfa field, according to Centerville City Mayor Michael Deamer, and could create more than 400 jobs and bring in $800,000 a year in revenue.Ĭity officials welcome the notion of more jobs and money, but a recent survey, conducted by a local citizens’ action group opposed to the Wal-Mart, claimed that 73 percent of Centerville City residents are against the store’s development. In January, Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, approached the city with a proposed 204,000-square foot Wal-Mart Supercenter, a grocery store and traditional Wal-Mart combined. While there’s no main industry to speak of in Centerville City, many residents like it that way and feel good that their town has remained a restive break from Salt Lake City some 10 miles south.ĭespite a relatively small population and a Main Street lined with local businesses like Cutler’s Cookies and Hepworth Floral, Centerville City residents have also attracted the attention of the booming national retail industry. The area is famous for skiing in the winter but depends on its rivers and the lake in the summer when dust from the desert rises along with the 90-degree temperatures. Most of the town’s 15,000 residents commute each day to Salt Lake City and like to think of their hometown as a peaceful, bedroom community. There civic activists are waging a campaign to deny the zoning permits that would allow retail behemoth Wal-Mart to move into town.Ĭenterville City, Utah, is bounded by the Wasatch Mountains to the east and the Great Salt Lake to the west.
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