Wal-Mart - An Odd Fit for a Town Bent on "Upscale" Revival

By Curmudgeon

I don't shop at Wal-Mart much. It's such a royal pain in the butt to negotiate the traffic over the viaduct on Riverdale Road that I generally avoid all of the stores there if I can. Not to mention Wal-Mart's militant anti-unionism and generally poor treatment of many who work for it.

Others here seem to have other reasons that, I guess, can be summed up as "who invited all these tacky people?" Most days, I could ask the same, if I was given to thinking that way, about the general crowd at the Mall as well. That's what big box stores, and mega-malls, do. They draw in people, generally from nearly all across the socio-economic spectrum.

But the question the Council and I guess we ought to be discussing is this: "Would a downtown Wal-Mart be a wise addition to the shopping mix in downtown Ogden?" Would it enhance and encourage the kind of development, look-and-feel, and business and residential climate the City seems to want to develop as part of the downtown resurgence or would it not?

The emphasis the city administration has been encouraging, seems to me, is downtown Ogden as a unique somewhat up-scale residential [condo/apartment] community, walking distance from Frontrunner, with a good selection of dining and entertainment options. That certainly as been the target image of the River Project developments, and today we learn from the Standard-Examiner that the proposed 300 room Art-Deco hotel will actually offer only 150 traditional convention hotel rooms, and 150 residential condo units. Wal-Mart does not seem to me to fit into that mix well.

But if the goal is to build up a critical mass of middle class and upper middle class residents downtown, and businesses that cater to them, seems to me that stand-alone merchants of various types scattered around [walking distance] the downtown area would be a far better idea than a big-box Wal-Mart. To be sustainable as a "walking urban community" downtown Ogden needs for openers a food market. Something like "Whole Foods" might fit the mix well. It needs a hardware store. It needs... desperately now... a bookshop. It needs one or two specialty shops like a Tony Caputo's. It has some good Mexican-American groceries, but they tend to be on the periphery, just out of comfortable strolling distance.

What puzzles me about the downtown Wal-Mart idea is that it seems so out of sync with the kind of development the administration has been urging for the area. Forgive the inelegant image, but a Wal-Mart thrown into the mix there now and planned, seems pretty much like tossing a turd in the punch bowl.

I realize there are arguments to be made against the Administration plan to up-scale [if you don't like the plan, to "yuppify"] downtown. And they are not by any means trivial arguments. We heard many of them here and in the letters column of the Std-Ex and in Charles Trentelman's column as well when the now, it seems, defunct Administration plan to move the St. Anne's Center way out by the Nature Center was first floated. [Another variation on "Who invited all these tacky people?"]

But my point is this: if the goal is to yuppify downtown Ogden, to turn its residential demographic up significantly, then the Wal-Mart idea seems way out of line with that vision and that plan. And I've yet to hear anyone from the Administration gaggle explain how it would fit in with the Fern Bar and Condo plans for the River Project, or the Up Scale Hotels, Condos, Restaurants and Shoppes Plan for closer in downtown.