Friends Of Madeira

I will be highly entertained over the next few months, perhaps years, watching a local group of housal unit owners fight the proposal to add a second WalMart here in our little Elk Grovian burg.

The Friends of Madeira (FoM) has sued the city. The store location was originally studied and approved in 2008 for a 150,000 sq ft Target, but the corporation sold off the land to WalMart who wants to build a 100,000 sq ft SuperCenter. FoM claims [as I understand it] that the the original review process would have been different for a big box store selling more than 10% perishables (read: groceries), and as such, the original review is insufficient. That is, the city must perform another one, and one that addresses the notional issues of urban decay, air pollution, and traffic that a grocery/retail store would bring.

"Refrigerated trucks entering and exiting a residential area? Unspeakable."

I personally find this a bogus argument. First off, Bruceville and Poppy Ridge roads are [or will soon become] 5-lane traffic sewers used to move most Maderia residents to and from their housal units to their jobs 15-30 miles away. The argument that a few dozen refrigerated trucks plying these collector roads will somehow create a traffic nightmare is bullshit...it's already brutalized by these consumer-commuters. Elk Grove is flat and jake brakes are already banned in the city limits.

The argument of parking lot lights shining into bedrooms: wouldn't a Target parking lot have done the same thing?

Then, this gem from FoM attorney Brett Jolley: "typically when you combine grocery with retail...there is a tendency to close other stores in the area." Well, when Madeira consumers clamor for mass volumes of cheaply produced foreign consumables and they can only get that through the economies of big box scale, what the fuck do you think happens to local retailers?

I believe this is nothing more than a group of housal unit owners who are concerned, rightfully so, that the introduction of a WalMart will reduce housal unit values, will introduce rampant minority crime, offer clouds of particulate diesel smoke for their young'ens and old'ens, offer fourteen hours of mercury vapor lamp lighting into their bedrooms, and traffic so bad you'd sooner slit your wrists than drive down Poppy Ridge Rd. But I believe their arguments are facetious.

Personally, I think they are more afraid of the People of WalMart -- people that don't look like them. Problem is, I could never prove my assertion and people can't sue on that basis in America...so we take other approaches to prosecute economic racism/segregation like arguing that refrigerated trucks belong nowhere near residential housal units. Therefore, it's argued, the corner (already single use zoned for commercial activity) is unsuitable for a WalMart and should be located elsewhere.

This one issue sums up perfectly many of the tenants I raise on my monologues -- the failures of single use zoning to provide for meaningful places to live, work and socialize (which, in this case, FoM argues that they shouldn't even be zoned adjacent to one another), locally undesirable land uses, the destruction of local economies and jobs while throwing parades for the grand opening of new big box stores, economic segregation, collector road sewers, and the spectacular failure of Elk Grovian suburbia to provide jobs sufficient to buy even the median Elk Grovian housal unit.

FoM will likely, and in my opinion, ought to, lose their fight. Communities across the U.S. fight these every day with the end result being more separation between land uses while these same communities' desires for cheap imported shit only serves to bolster the introduction of said stores. Valid relationships between commerce, industry and residential are only further destroyed through these actions yet we continue to march march! towards living in cities without worth.