A Walmart Story, Part 2

In our previous post, we saw how WalMart moved into  thriving small town and destroyed it with its low prices/low wages business plan, eventually leaving the town an empty shell of its former self,

Now we move to Pt. 2: REBIRTH!

Some years later some starving artists find this empty town with this grand old theater and empty houses. They move in and start making art and telling everybody at Burning Man to come see them. For about a year some truly revolutionary art is created.

Rich's real estate overseer finds these artists on his annual trip to the property and reports to Rich. Rich swings a deal whereby these "artists" can live in his vacant buildings for a modest rent while he still claims them as "vacant" on his taxes.

The following year more artists come, along with folks who love artists and want to be artists. YouTube videos of the spectacular events there get attention from the radical press, which are then picked up by the mainstream media. Art lovers start to come to this town to see the art. Vic works odd jobs for these artists, running to the convenience store to get them coffee. He manages to save up enough money to get a cofe maker and sets up a little coffee stand to cater to these new people coming to see the art. The artists and wanna-be artists set up little shops and boutiques in the vacant storefronts to sell things to each other and the art lovers.

Vic moves into a vacant storefront himself, gets some couches left behind by former residents and sets up a "cafe" where local art is displayed and the new residents hang out.

Rich finds out about all this, and so do local municipalities. Rich knows the gig is up, so he claims innocence, swears that he did not know about this, but he will bring the buildings up to spec for habitation if the municipality can change the zoning from "condemned" to "residential/commercial."

Rich offers official leases to all the people living and working in his buildings. These leases are a lot higher than the rents the people were paying before. Higher even than Bob and Carl were paying when they had shops there. 

Most of the "first wave" of artists can no longer afford to be there and have to move out. They are replaced by more up-scale entrepreneurs and trust fund kids who wear skinny jeans and ironic glasses. Vic takes out a small-business loan to expand cafe and make it really chic. The cafe becomes the social center of the community. The new residents start having kids and raising families. The neighborhood becomes safe and desirable. More people start moving in. There is new construction. The theater (which had closed because the artists who had renovated it were among the first who had to move out) is gutted and renovated into condo lofts.

Big corporations notice the growth of this community and start looking to move in their franchises. Starbucks. Subway. McDonald's. All with specially designed storefronts in keeping with the "hip, artsy vibe" of the new community. Vic's cafe turns out to be in the most desirable spot in town. Rich jacks up his rent again, to a degree that Rich knows Vic can't afford, but a major bank that has been looking for a spot to open a new branch can. Vic holds fundraisers and the remaining artists in town hold festivals to support him, but there is no way he is going to be able to afford the rent, and he closes a month later. In 3 weeks a spanking new Capital One branch opens in its place. Rich provides another storefront with the same rent he had been paying ("Look what I did for you!") in a far less convenient section of town. Vic gives it the "old college try," but the magic is gone, his customers have fled or are now at Starbucks, and he descends into a haze of alcohol and painkillers and PTSD nightmares and is dead before the end of the year.

The local community newspapers (started by third-wave people who had moved in, and which had taken over from those started by the first and second wave which did not survive the new rents) bemoan the "gentrification" of the town and write tributes to the Vic's Cafe as they write "what did it used to be?" articles about the former-theater-turned-condo-lofts and research the origins of the street names.

The WalMart comes along. The residents (most of whom have not been living there for more than three years) fight the new WalMart location in their community with a massive letter-writing campaign to their elected officials and demonstration on the proposed site of the WalMart with sign and banners and music and massive theatrics against the corporate takover of local, thriving communities. WalMart runs commercials about how warm and fuzzy they are and how they help communities. while sending out a mailing of flyers promoting their low prices and "consumer choice."

I understand they are still fighting it out in court.

But at least for now, that is why and how you keep WalMart out of your community.