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My husband is psyched
Me? I suggested that we buy the bike trailer that our friend has for sale. We are never going to be able to get near that parking lot with a car ;-)
In the closed Shaws location?
In the closed Shaws location?
No
In the Meadow Glen Mall space between Marshalls and Kohls. The middle of that mess needs some serious renovations, and this is how they will happen.
Amazing
Sounds like the definition of good money after bad. Really - meadow glen mall? One wonders what treats Curtatone was demanding in Somerville if Medford managed to swing this and he didn't.
Medford is not the place for
Medford is not the place for a Wegmans!
majority of the people who live in Medford are frugal and penny pinching Italians, they're not going to pay top dollar for a zucchini or pay top dollar for ready made wegman style pasta that they serve.They're already in cahootz with Shaws prices.
Wal*Mart
At least it's not a Wal*Mart.. It's been speculated for years that Wal*Mart was going to buy the mall, level it, and build a SuperStore there.
I'm not a Wegman's fan (sorry. die hard Market Basket shopper here), but I'd rather have a Wegman's than another Wal*mart.
I do agree the Mall needs to go. I was there a few months ago and you know a mall is on its way out when the McDonald's closes inside. It's a sad shell of what the mall was in its hayday in the 80s and 90s.
"another Walmart"
The closest Walmarts to Boston are in Lynn or Quincy. They're not exactly overrunning the Boston metro area. Whereas we have plenty of other big-box stores in or around the city limits (Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, etc)
PS Stoked Wegmans is opening.
Sorry
Very anti-walmart here.. Any new walmart opening is one too many.
Agreed
When WalMart was floated as an option, there was some pretty intense community opposition. Politicians will do a lot to avoid that kind of controversy.
I'm not sure who would have shopped there, anyway - hating WalMart cuts across pretty much all of the major social divisions in Medford and nearby Somerville.
yeah
look how well it went over when WalFoods (Wal*Mart fresh Market) wanted to open up in the old Circuit City space in Assembly Square.
I'm just very anti Wal*mart because I've seen what it's done to communities after its opened. Pretty sickening.. pretty sickening company if you ask me.
I haven't stepped foot in a Wal*mart in almost 10 years and don't plan on doing so anytime soon. Family gives me WM gift cards at xmas, which I promptly resell online. I won't even spend someone else's money there, I dispose them that much. (they've been told no more WM gift cards.. I've given them a list of other stores I like instead)
What has it done to communities?
I don't follow you.
Folks have these grand ideas that everyone is going to shop at local and/or mom and pop stores and everything will be grand as we tip toe through the daisies. People shop at a Wal Mart because when you have a limited amount of weekly income, this is where you can afford to shop. They fill a need, pure and simple.
Extreme drain on resources
WalMart stores cost communities $$$ in subsidies for the people they employ at substandard wages. WalMart is very heavily subsidized by social programs, and they know it and direct their workers to food banks, etc. Communities have caught on to this, and are now far less willing to host their parasitic stores.
They suck tax breaks, too, wherever they can, further burdening local and regional governments to subsidize their poverty factories.
They Sold Our Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs To Communist China
Don't blame WalMart
Don't blame WalMart. Blame the people for whom getting more stuff cheaper was more important than keeping their neighbors employed / their Main Street alive, and who therefore chose to shop at WalMart.
oh I do
oh I do blame Wal*Mart.
When WalMart moves into an area without a big WalMart presence, they purposely LOSE MONEY on every product to get people into the store. Once they've successfully killed off any other competitor, they jack up the prices some so they no longer have a negative profit margin.
This is their business objective.. make people depend on WalMart to the point where there's no other option avaliable.
This is what happened to my hometown in NH. We were the second town in NH to get a WalMart in the 1990s. In 1990 we had a vibrant downtown before WalMart moved in. We had a supermarket, a few local drug stores, a hardware store, a card shop, and many other locally owned small businesses. By the end of the 1990s.. most of Main Street was all 'for lease' signs, and most of the businesses who closed all said the same thing... "We cannot compete with WalMart on price".
Sure that may seem anecdotal to you, but this is the case in many, many small towns across the US where WalMart moved in and squashed everyone else.
I see your point btw.. but that's not exactly it. Its hard for struggling families to decide.. save a few bucks on some groceries or support a local business. I see it, and get it. But I think many people were tricked into shopping at WalMart because of the low prices without realizing that downtown was going to suffer in the process.
"I'm not sure who would have shopped there"
Seriously? Maybe the tens of thousands of people in Greater Boston looking to stretch their dollar further?
And don't give me the tired "Walmart mistreats its workers" or "Walmart is bad for local business" cliches. The exact same could be said about all the big box stores. Nobody's boycotting the South Bay complex.
Sorry
Wal*Mart has a long. long, long, list of questionable business practices and employee relation issues.
A simple google will show you many of them.
They far exceed all the other big box store combined.
I also suggest watching the documentary called "The Cost of Lower Prices". Your eyes will open very wide about WalMart after that.
PS - We don't need WalMart, we still have low cost options because we've fended off WalMart for so long. Once WalMart moves in, most of their competitors go out of business because they can't compete.
I agree however
there are many, many people who, financially, can afford only to shop at Wal Mart. And in regards to the other options, could you be more explicit?
I live in an area with a Whole Foods, a Wegmans', a Roche Bros, Shaws and Stop and Shop and a bit more down the way, a Wal Mart. Wal Mart is by far the cheapest of the bunch in regards to its pricing.
(I have family relatives who work for Stop and Shop Corp and let us just say they, like Wal Mart, and like many other companies, also treat employees, in general, poorly. And do you think Shaws is any better?)
As I said, yes, the company is slimy in regards to labor issues and the ilk but it is fulfilling a need and until the need to shop at a Wal Mart is rectified (which probably will not happen in my life time), than Wal Mart is here to stay.
Alternatively....
There is nobody who "can afford only to shop at Wal Mart. The alternative to Wal Mart doesn't need to be "spend more elsewhere for the same stuff." It could be, "buy less stuff.
whyaduck
We still have downtown areas that are vibrant. We still have many locally owned businesses. And we have places like Market Basket, McKinnons, and Bjs. (Market Basket is considered a WalMart killer)
I get what you're trying to say about "people are forced to shop there due to lower prices". but see my comment to Bob on why that is.
That is the difference.
To your other post above... Everything Swirly said, and everything I said to Bob Leponge.
Plus.. going on the tax break thing Swirly said.. go visit the south some day. I lived outside in Atlanta in Dunwoody for a bit (an unincorporated area). City of Atlanta gave WalMart a huge tax break to open a store near the mall. Once the tax break ran out. WalMart closed up the store and built one .125 miles away (yes less than a 1/4 of a mile away) into Norcross, which is in Gwinette County, where they got another tax break. The old WalMart now sits empty because they won't rent to any other big box retailer or anyone who will be a competitor.
This has happened countless times across the US. Drive thru some towns and you'll see as many as 3-4 closed WalMarts there because they closed them after the tax breaks ended.
And yes like Swirly said, they treat their workers like crap. Did you hear about the guy who was fired because he collected cans and got the return on them? I know of four women personally who were apart of the large class action lawsuit because WalMart does not promote women.
And then the whole food stamp thing whereas WalMart workers do not make enough so they automatically qualify for food stamps and state health insurance. And in some WalMarts they come right and tell you that you should apply. How is this fair?
(and I know S&S and Shaw's workers also and yes they do get treated badly but these same people are also unionized and are paid fairly good for retail jobs.. I can't say that about WalMart)
Illusion Of Low Prices + Race To Bottom Of Quality = Less Value
Yes
The quality suffers.
This is why I laugh at people on black friday waiting in line to get TVs at WalMart because they are the cheapest Tvs out there.
Case in point... Manufacturers make models of stuff for specific retailers. For example, Sony may make a model of TV called WEGA2007. But at WalMart it's WEGA2007A, at BestBuy it's WEGA2007B, Sears it's WEGA2007S ..
Whats the difference? The WalMart TV may have one input. The BestBuy, maybe two. Maybe the WalMart TV has lower quality LCD panel inside while the Sears one does not. Very SLIGHT differences, enough to make big price differences.
Or even worse.. Different manufacturers use different brand names for each department store. Funai, Emerson, Westinghouse are all brands that are made by the same manufactuer but just have lower quality parts inside depending on the brand.
This is why it pays to shop around and pay attention to the model numbers when you buy and COMPARE them.
(Home Depot is infamous for doing this also.. ask me about my Schlage Doorknob sometime)
Those Custom Model Numbers Are Another Way To Challenge Shoppers
It's difficult to do comparison shopping when each retailer has slightly different versions of the same product.
So-called "price match guarantees" are useless when model numbers are unique to a particular store.
Even in grocery items, Wal Mart uses custom package sizes so there's no exact match at other stores.
Medford is a big union town
Any construction would have been heavily salted with organizers.
Any attempts for variances to build bigger or expand parking lots would have been fought tooth and nail - particularly since a lot of this land counts as historic tidelands.
Any workforce would also be salted.
The community made it very clear that WalMart was not welcome, and Somerville made it extremely clear that WalMart was not welcome.
WalMart took the hint - they didn't want to lose the legal battles with the unions who would have organized and would have screwed them to the wall for firing organizers. They prefer to operate where people don't have this kind of high fire power support to fight their illegal labor practices.
.
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Bring in WinCo!
Employee owned AND lower prices than NeoplamMart.
Walmart in Saugus
Rte 1 Saugus has the dreaded Walmart
I Refuse To Shop There, But The Videos Are Entertaining
Maybe they should bring back
Maybe they should bring back the swimming pool that was there...........
or a drive in theatre
That is what was there before the mall was. (which is why the parking lot has signs with old timey movie stars in it)
Pool was part of drive in,
Pool was part of drive in, think Sumner owned it.........
where was a pool?
I'm looking at Historic Aerials from 1969 and see no pool.
http://historicaerials.com:?layer=1969&zoom=17&lat=42.40659298819848&lon...
Dont know about no aerials
Dont know about no aerials but I assure you there was a pool,went in it after making deliveries a few times. It was above ground ,place was Meadow Glen Twin Drive In , part of Sumner's chain.That was when 93 south ended nearby just past the intersection of Parkway and Mystic ave, almost across from a Howdy hamburger joint that was on Mystic.
Part of the snack bar/arcade area
There was a wading pool/kiddie pool planned as part of the snackbar and arcade area after WWII.
http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/11460
There is also DCR land across the parkway, the LoConti Rink, brick quarries, and Tufts Pool in South Medford - any of which you might remember and might have resulted in a swimming pool for a time.
thats why
I posted an aerial. You can't see it from space. Where was it in the drive in?
Even the 1955 aerials I can't see a pool.
http://historicaerials.com:?layer=1955&zoom=17&lat=42.40659298819848&lon...
Look to the north
There is a quarry pond with what looks like a bath house. The pond is filled by the 1970s, but not built out until the 1990s.
Current use of the site: InBev distribution center.
As noted, there are other swimming pools and former swimming pools in the area. Tufts Pool is a city-owned facility in nearby South Medford. There is also a small round pool behind a building at the drive in during the 1960s. I don't know if the MDC had anything along there - much of that land was not stable land until the Earhart Dam went in in 1966 - note that the river is clearly tidal up to the late 1960s.
Not Inbev that's off
Not Inbev (August Busch ) that's off Riverside ave.This was a store bought 4' deep above ground pool, right up front ,seeable from the parkway. I would make the delivery, then jump in and exit stage right. No kiddies, this was on the drive in property, part of the ambiance.
Bummer! Wegmans' produce
Bummer! Wegmans' produce selection is dismal and it's more expensive than Whole Paycheck. I was looking forward to checking out Wegmans' after hearing the hype from New Yorkers over the past few years, however the few times I've been there the store was kind of a mess and not well stocked. I went in for a few simple items this past summer and the strawberries were super expensive and had mold. Didn't dare buy any of the salad ingredients since those were looking pretty tire too. Can't bring food to a family party if it looks like you might get sick from it! They do offer good prices on bulk snack foods and booze though. However, for day to day meals, Market Basket would have been better.
I like Market Basket....
have you checked out the Wegmans' in University Station? It is huge, quality is very good and the pricing is better than Roche Bros in Westwood and Whole Paycheck.
In Medford it will be known as
Weymans.