Wal-Mart Supercenter plans draw small group of protesters

Stephen Curran

Wednesday, June 2, 2004 | 11:08 a.m.

Sandy Hanson was drawn to Wal-Mart for the same reason millions of other Americans flock to the chain's thousands of stores every day: she wanted to save money.

But now, she won't set foot in the stores owned by the world's biggest retailer. The 20-year Albertson's clerk and member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union believes Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is a threat to her livelihood.

In fact, Hanson was so incensed by the prospect of Wal-Mart opening another store offering groceries that she joined about 20 other Las Vegas residents Tuesday to protest the proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Russell Road.

The Supercenter, a combination discount and grocery store, would be Wal-Mart's ninth in Clark County and would replace the regular Wal-Mart at Tropicana Avenue and Pecos Road, said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Amy Hill. The nearest Wal-Mart Supercenter to the proposed site is about two miles south at 2310 E. Serene Ave.

The company also operates six regular Wal-Marts -- those without groceries -- in Clark County, she said.

"It's frustrating that they (Wal-Mart) have such a foothold in this community," said Hanson, who arrived at the protest in her uniform. "It's hard to make the general public aware."

Union grocery workers fear that nonunion Wal-Mart will undercut prices at their stores, putting pressure on their employers to cut labor costs.

California-based supermarkets made the same arguments recently, winning concessions from workers after a bitter strike.

The Clark County Commission is scheduled to vote today on the roughly 200,000-square-foot store. Commissioner Rory Reid, who represents the neighborhood, said he had not decided how he will vote.

However, he has communicated with several community members who have voiced concerns about the project's impact for the area, Reid said.

The Airport Area Committee for Neighborhood Preservation, spearheaded by retired therapist Mary Cooke, is a loosely organized group of mostly long-term residents in the multiblock area near McCarran International Airport.

The area, formerly the site of dozens of single-family homes, was rezoned for commercial development in May 2003 after the homes were demolished, a move Reid said generated little controversy at the time.

"When people become aware of what the actual use is going to be they become concerned," he said. "It's an area where people live and they're concerned about their community."

The residents say the project would increase traffic hazards for the already busy Russell-Eastern intersection, citing a study by Steve Orosz, a Santa Ynez, Calif.-based traffic engineer hired by the group, that found the Wal-Mart claim of "minimal" impact to be incorrect.

The difference between his and Wal-Mart's numbers were "significant enough to where the (Wal-Mart) traffic study underestimates the impact," Orosz said.

Meanwhile the company has taken steps to address increased traffic on the busy thoroughfare, designing a series of different low-impact driveways for the shopping center, Hill said.

The store, which would anchor the 316,000-square-foot McCarran Retail Center, would attract another 40,000 to 44,000 cars per day to the area, which is near two elementary schools and one middle school, Orosz found in the study.

Those statistics hit home for Anne Lacala, a mother of three whose oldest son attends Cannon Middle School on Euclid Avenue and Russell Road, about a block from the proposed store site. Even without the store, she said, flashing signs reminding drivers to slow down at crosswalks are barely enough to slow the traffic near the school.

"The only thing that protects the kids are the flashers," she said. "When those kids get out there, there will be nothing slowing the cars."

Others, including singer Jo Bonin, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1978, said the addition of a Wal-Mart would lower the property value of their homes, she said. Houses in the neighborhood currently fetch about $200,000.

Residents in August 2002 successfully kept Wal-Mart from building a store at the corner of Sahara Avenue and Hualapai Way in Summerlin after more than 500 residents of the Peccole Ranch development launched an effort to fight the similar supercenter in their neighborhood.

Now, similar measures are the only hope for those living near the proposed store, Hanson said.

Nationwide, ballot initiatives in Inglewood, Calif., and Chicago have also kept the store out of those communities.

But chances are slim that similar efforts would be effective in Las Vegas, Hill said.

"That was a very unique situation and it certainly did not end how we would like to see it," she said. "It doesn't reflect the fact that we get stores approved every day in this country."