Amid the closure of 150 or so Walmarts across the country, the booming Washington, D.C., region did not escape without casualties. Two planned stores in poorer parts of town, east of the Anacostia river, will not be built.
Three Walmarts, including one that opened on H Street two years ago, have been built in the city limits — but in the wealthier parts of town. I visited the H Street Walmart this week and spoke with associates and shoppers about the impending winter storm expected to rock the region in a few days, as well as the cancelled Walmarts.
One associate, who asked not to be named, told me that most customer worries expressed are about the nationwide closures. They worry that this location is among those slated to be closed. (It isn’t.) The associate tells me, as a local, that the real disappointment about the aborted stores is in her home community: “Every neighborhood needs a Walmart, that’s how we feel.”
A cab driver shopping in the personal care section who lives near the D.C / Maryland line tells me that he typically drives to the Walmart in Landover Hills, Maryland, which is about 10 miles away. The H Street location is convenient for him when driving around, but the new locations would have been “a real help to a lot of people.” Alas, his means of transportation is a luxury many of Washington’s poorest lack: cars.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. City leaders, labor activists, and community organizers all fought Walmart’s advances at first. But after some sweet talking by the execs in Bentonville, city leaders cautiously got on board, but with a price.
As Courtland Milloy reports in The Washington Post:
What’s worse, the city took Walmart’s handshake agreement and sent its economic development pencil pushers to Anacostia with bulldozers:
Not only did the city clear the way for a Walmart that, now, isn’t going to happen, it spent $90 million to pave the way. Now, the good hope created by the potential for a Walmart has morphed into talk of lawsuits. It’s not the only blow that the long struggling east of D.C. has been dealt lately: The city dropped its plans for an Anacostia line on its wildly expensive streetcar plans that are years behind schedule. (Naturally, local politicians are directing their anger at Walmart, rather than some much-needed introspection. Surely, none of this is their fault.)
Before Walmart broke ground, activists and labor union types tried a Hail Mary called the Large Retailer Accountability Act. It would have required large retailers, mainly Walmart and the city’s lone Costco, to pay “no less than $12.50 an hour in combined wages and benefits.” At the time, the Washington Examiner‘s Sean Higgins argued that a minimum wage increase proposals would bring with it the unintended consequence of insulating the D.C. Walmarts from competition. Times have changed, and while that battle was lost, the activists’ war may have been won by other means.
Fighting off minimum wage measures and attempts at unionization, Walmart voluntarily agreed to pay its workers a base wage of $10 an hour. Later this year, D.C.’s minimum wage is set to rise to $11.50 an hour, and come November, there’s a ballot initiative that could raise it to $15.
With Walmart’s business slowing, and the company’s profit margins shrinking as a result of their new $10 base wage, the Walmart claims the higher wage mandates come with a cost: no new stores in Washington.
After this setback, it’s unclear whether Washington will revert to its old ways: the traditional shakedown. One thing’s for certain: City-led economic development, handshake agreements, and minimum wage activist ballot initiatives don’t mix.
