SACTOWN 2020

Sacramento City planners and supervisors are really digging WalMart's new digs at the old Florin Mall. What a breath of fresh air this new store brings to the community!

One hundred and ninety one thousand square feet of retail heaven, tremendous tax revenues, and three hundred more jobs than their abandoned store a mile away (a total of six hundred now work there). Bustling, vibrant parking lots; bustling, vibrant satellite retailers like Sleep Train mattresses, a store that reported to get about five additional passers-in now that the WalMart has opened. Not just drivers-by.

So we've created three hundred new jobs. Is that wonderful news? Let me take a guess on the average hourly rate for all three hundred...$13 an hour?

$28k per year, assuming this is a full time worker which probably doesn't apply to a quarter of these employees. I hold no contempt for anyone's wage, I never have, but I do stop to consider that in a better economic clime these workers probably have a 25% turnover rate, implying that they don't give a shit about their jobs, only their paychecks. There is little dignity as a sales associate. "It's a job, man." And with the median home price in South Sacramento at $102,500, that's about 3X annual wage which, in my opinion, is too large a spread.

Now, there's no one who would expect a sales associate to pull down enough to become a homeowner, so I realize this is a straw man I'm burning...but stop to consider that this employee is also forced to own a vehicle to get to work...do you think an overnight stocker can take a bus at 10:30 PM to work? Can take a 5:00AM bus home? Hell no...because we don't have a sufficient level of transit service in this city. What, he's gonna ride a bike? And park it where? His motorized vehicular costs will probably eat a quarter of his income -- especially in South Sacramento where a $2000 car is required to have $1500 rims and a $2200 thumpin' audio system.

OK, enough of this. I think the far more important issue about this new super WalMart, an issue that is totally and completely ignored by everyone, is the big box shell WalMart vacated less than a mile away at Franklin and Florin. The original site is now a ghostbox. The building now sits derelict and silent on an ocean of unused asphalt. There are no windows on this warehouse sized building -- it can't be used for much of anything else other than more discounted mass retail -- and with SuperWalMart a mile away, who's going to occupy it? Huh? Besides, I would bet my next paycheck that WalMart's lease on that ghostbox forbids competitors from moving in, or that they've cut a deal with our city leadership that in exchange for building the new site we've given them exclusive market share by preventing any other retailer from taking over the old big box shell. This is your precious free market at work, folks.

Perhaps it'll become another fucking church, like we don't have enough old supermarkets and roller rinks already converted around here.

Perhaps it'll become an indoor go-kart track. Wa-hey! More jobs! Hundreds of six figure jobs! Go-kart attendants, go-kart mechanics...and it'll feed off South Sacramentan lust for all things NASCAR: unbridled speed, promotion of street racing, beautiful twill racing attire, etc. Put in a climbing wall and a laser-tag game area and you'll be set for the next wave of economic recovery when South Sacramentans cash-out re-fi their houses and spend it at the raceway. Even sheriff's are getting into the street racing game...at least this well-liked idiot killed no one but himself.

Perhaps it'll become an indoor waterpark, filled with scores of six figure jobs attending to all those fat, overweight, pasty-skinned, out of shape South Sacramento residents who can't haul up the rubber raft to the top or who'll get stuck in the tubes.

In Austin, MN, they've converted a vacant WalMart into the Spam Museum. Hmmmm....what kinda museum would we create? Perhaps The Museum of Broken Dreams. A museum of beautiful and lasting architecture...filled with relics and art prints of buildings that used to be worth a shit. Buildings that used to get built but aren't anymore, that are illegal to build anymore...

A 24-hour fitness center! Wa-hey again! We don't have enough gyms in South Sacramento, for sure...yes...that's why the obesity rates are over 35%. There's enough space for an indoor track, so people can run even when it's raining outside or 108 degrees, and also because we can't run around our own fucking town without having to compete with motorists. There isn't a single, not one, area in all of South Sacramento where runners can run without the constant threat of being mowed down by a motorized vehicle.

Perhaps a velodrome! Yes! This would also help South Sacramento's chances when we bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics. SACTOWN 2020. This would elevate our international standing, put our city on the map...SACTOWN 2020. I will petition to become a delegate, schmooze with the National Olympic Committee in all corners of the globe. SACTOWN 2020.

Low income housing! Better yet, how about an indoor tent-city? That way, we wouldn't legally be required to air-condition it, just install a really big fan on the roof.

Yes, I think there are endless endless! possibilities here. I should consider this ghostbox store an opportunity instead of just blight.

Edit 7-21-09: Just learned that BJs Fish and Chips, which is located in the Southgate Plaza more or less next to the vacant WalMart store, is now going out of business after 40 years. While the sleeptrain near the new WalMart supercenter gains customers, the ancillary businesses near the old dead WalMart are dying. Don't read about that in the Sacramento Business Journal, do you? They are creaming their shorts about the new superWalMart and the shitloads of tax revenues but they don't give a flying fuck about what damage a vacant big box brings to the old "plaza."

My guess is that the whole of Southgate Plaza will stay derelict for years. Years! Then, at some point, the whole damn thing will come down and a new Hong Kong Plaza or Vietnamese bazaar will emerge. It's only too bad that it takes a dozen years and the complete destruction of the area to force the change. The bad news is that it will be the same goddamn single use, single floor,retail model -- only Saigon style.