To Whom It May Concern:

It has recently come to my attention that the Wal-Mart Corporation is planning on expanding their business into the Town of Gilbert by building one of their largest and most expansive operations, a Wal-Mart Supercenter, next door to our town’s municipal buildings at the corner of Warner and Gilbert Roads. This is bad idea, and will have a significant negative impact on the physical and cultural landscape of our community should Wal-Mart succeed with their plans.

Whether or not you believe in the corporate business practices of Wal-Mart; whether you support anti-competitive super-store sprawl or worry about the homogenization of American retail; whether you never shop at Wal-Mart, shop there occasionally, or buy everything you own from our local Wal-Mart outlets; the mismatch of placing a giant “big box” super store in the heart of any town’s civic center has to be apparent. It is, in a single word, “ridiculous” and could only be considered a good idea by disinterested corporate executives concerned primarily with shareholder satisfaction and the bottom line, not with preserving the culture, community, and atmosphere of the given people (in this case the Town of Gilbert) that they wish to extract profits from.

A town’s civic center is its front door. It is the gateway into the community and should represent what is important, valuable, and dear to the residents of the community. Our municipal core is important space and should be cherished. At a minimum, a town’s civic and municipal district should stand as somewhat hallowed ground, as a neutral area where the important business of government occurs free from direct big corporate and commercial influence. At its best such a district might also develop into an active community center, a gathering space for members of our community to come together, engaged in activities unique to us and to our culture. (Examples might included community festivals, small concerts, art fairs, and markets that are as much or more about the community building activity of shopping and engagement then they are about retail profits and outcomes). Neither of these objectives will be well served by placing a 200,000 square foot commercial giant super-store in the heart of our town, next to our mayor, next to our court house, next to our police department, squeezed next to several residential neighborhoods, and within a half a mile of two elementary schools. It is a bad idea, a very bad idea.

The Town of Gilbert, which means us—the residents of Gilbert—must form an intelligent response to this suggested super-store expansion by a large corporation that does not value our interests as a community. Again, the massive domestic and global expansion of Wal-Mart (Wal-Mart plans to open approximately 50 new discount stores and 180 to 185 new Supercenters in 2003) may or may not be a good idea for our country and our world, but placing one of these giant super-stores as the gateway to our community, in the core of our most cherished and important landscape, would be a terrible mistake and should most certainly be stopped.

Sincerely,