Call me cynical, but the dreamy vision for a new Apache Plaza anchored with a WalMart, flanked by commuter rail whisking people downtown to plays at the Guthrie is a bit too much to swallow. After 40 days of evidence that mass transit is not a priority for this metro area, we'll have to dream like this for 40 more years. Mayor Hodson opines, "Who knows, maybe we'll even get to the point where we get healthy again because we're out walking in our community."

Oh yeah, lack of a WalMart was keeping us holed up in our houses. This is going to be great, we'll be getting in better shape now as we walk around the WalMart parking lot looking for our cars. This thoroughly unoriginal tenant will make St. Anthony like thousands of identical American suburbs.

From a Dec. 2003 story at Fast Company:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

Wal-Mart is not just the world's largest retailer. It's the world's largest company--bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric. The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined.

CD:

To put this in perspective, here's a list of nations with GDP (in billions) less than WalMart sales recipts.

Indonesia       215.93
Denmark         207.44
Turkey          191.17
South Africa    175.90
Thailand        174.97
Finland         173.56
Norway          172.91
Poland          165.27
Hong Kong       164.63
Greece          144.77
Saudi Arabia    143.88
Portugal        131.88
Iran            127.13
Ireland         112.91
Malaysia        112.21
Singapore       112.02
Nigeria         110.21
Israel          107.30

Conor Donnelly
01-02
Waitepark

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