[Mpls] Apache Plaza to be replaced by Wal-Mart? Say it ain't so!

[Conor Donnelly]

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