Chicago taxpayers looking for a common-sense explanation of the likely impact of the proposed “big box” ordinance currently under consideration by the Chicago City Council surely did not find it in a commentary that appeared in the Tribune June 25 in support of those proposals (“How large retailers can be neighborly; Pay a living wage and health benefits,” Commentary, June 25, by Annette Bernhardt, deputy director of the poverty program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, and Nik Theodore, director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago).
The writers of the essay take the academic–as opposed to the realistic–approach to reach their conclusion that Wal-Mart and other large retailers will open new stores in the city if the proposed law, which would mandate minimum wages for employers with stores bigger than 90,000 square feet, is approved by the council.
Make no mistake: Wal-Mart wants to open stores in Chicago and hopes the new West Side location, which opens in September, is the first of many. During two years of planning for that opening, our company has built a partnership with the community that we believe will serve as a strong basis for continued economic development in a part of town that needs it badly.
But no business, large or small, can afford to operate in an environment in which it is at a competitive disadvantage. Simply put, that’s the kind of situation this proposal would create. We do not say so to “scare” anyone. We say so because it is a straightforward, honest statement whose accuracy every businessperson or consumer can recognize.
If this proposal becomes law, common sense tells us that retail development will go to the suburbs instead of the city and that Chicago will lose jobs and millions of dollars in sales and property tax revenues it could have otherwise captured.
Wal-Mart wants to operate in the city of Chicago. It wants to hire Chicagoans and it wants to sell Chicagoans good merchandise at a low price right in their neighborhoods.
