Stymied by Politicians, Wal-Mart Turns to Voters--to create regulation-free city-within-a-city...per New York Times
INGLEWOOD, Calif., April 2 — As Wal-Mart continues its march across the American landscape, this Los Angeles suburb of 112,000 people is the latest testing ground for the company's exercise of political and marketing muscle. Inglewood voters go to the polls on Tuesday to decide whether to turn over 60 acres of barren concrete adjacent to the Hollywood Park racetrack to Wal-Mart to create a megastore and a collection of chain shops and restaurants. The ballot initiative is sponsored by Wal-Mart, which collected more than 10,000 signatures to put the question to voters after the Inglewood City Council blocked the proposed development last year, citing environmental, traffic, labor, public safety and economic concerns.

While Wal-Mart has turned to the ballot in a number of cities and towns to win the right to build its giant emporiums, the Inglewood initiative is significantly different. The proposal would essentially exempt Wal-Mart from all of Inglewood's planning, zoning and environmental regulations, creating a city-within-a-city subject only to its own rules. Wal-Mart has hired an advertising and public relations firm to market the initiative and is spending more than $1 million to support the measure, known as initiative 04-A.


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The electoral aspects of this are fascinating. Inglewood is an old suburb located on the border of Los Angeles, right next to Los Angeles International Airport and including Hollywood Park, the gigantic horse racing track. The city, the story notes, is about half black and half latino and the unions and community groups are heavily opposed to the initiative. Now, tomorrow we will see how many voters of a liberal demographic slant will vote to create a private corporate city-within-a-city, overriding their own elected representatives to do so. As the story notes, if this effort succeeds Wal-Mart can be expected to do the same thing elsewhere (they want to build 40 more of these super-stores in California within the next 5 years!) As the song "New York, New York" goes, "if I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere, come through for me...INGLEWOOD?"