Yesterday, after years of battle with the town and its residents, Walmart broke ground on what will be the most controversial store in the greater Rochester area.

They are tearing down a strip mall that had its heyday in the late 60's early 70's and has been on a spiralling death knell ever since. However, the local residents around said strip are content with the eyesore and lack of traffic that it brings. So protests, town meetings, shady deals, back and forths, and on and on have been raging for about 5 years now (at least that has been the timeframe it has been publicly discussed).

To make matters worse, they are putting in the largest Super Walmart Rochester will have ever seen on a road that is a single lane at the best of times. One with many pot holes, rutts, and other hazards. One that many children, elderly, and homeless use to play LARP Frogger.

And all this is right across the street from a Wegmans (which is one of the top Grocery chains in the nation and ranks in the top 10 of places to work according to Forbes for the last 13 years running).

I can't wait to see what happens as construction starts rebuilding the property, the inevitable road construction that will need to be done to accommodate, the shift in property value for the homes who had to have their backyard re-zoned to make room for the Walmart loading docks, and everything else this circus will bring to town in just a mere .2miles from my front door!

Yay.

Walking distance to a toyless mecca.

CCC.

Ben if didn't know any better, I'd think you weren't excited about this new development .

That's so funny and awful at the same time! What an image...SPLAT! game over for grandma. I feel ashamed that I initially laughed at the thought.

I wish my home town had a Walmart.

All we had was an Ames, and it went out of business over a decade ago. It's still empty to this day because my hometown's too uptight to allow a Walmart.

Meanwhile, the lack of sales tax revenue keeps increasing the local property tax . . .

So, there are two sides to every story. I wouldn't want a Walmart next door to me, but I would like one within 5 miles.

Fortunately, now that I'm in Phoenix, I have more Walmarts than I can shake a stick at.

Now there's a saying that I'd like to know the origin of. Who the hell shakes sticks a large amounts of things ? And Why?

Sekmet for the win!!

how did we go from a thread about post whoring to a thread about the derivation of colloquialisms?

Because Walmart is so poorly managed and brain dead, it inspires people to seek comfort in scholarly information. Maybe.

Vee are not compensatink, are vee?

CCC.

Back on track.

Is WM going to be resonsible for any road widening? If not they should be.

There needs to be some significant pressure brought on the local authorities over this matter. Elections are around the corner. . .

That's been one of the "hot topics" that has kept this thing in limbo for 5 years or so. The town wants it because of the revenue it will generate (and the revitalization they hope that follows it to an otherwise dead commercial zone). The residents are fighting it due to all the hassle that comes along with a project of this magnitude.

I personally don't care one way or the other. My route to work is frakked up no matter which way I go as they are doing gutter repair work on both outlets of my street.

To be honest, I don't think it will be as bad as my neighbors all seem to think, but I don't think it will be as good as the bean counters think either.

Any boon that comes from this will, I believe, be short lived and then life will return to "normal". Most of the arguments, both for and against, are very short sighted in my estimation.

If they can stick to their guns and get WM to foot the bill for the roads the locals should do it. I've seen WM do this before. If it's not done up front it isn't going to happen and traffic will be a mess.

The survey crews have been out, and they have already started work on some of the ancillary streets (gutter repair on my end, new sidewalks and crosswalks closer to the store's location, etc.) and it looks like the road widening might just mean a narrower shoulder and berm so that might not be as big a deal as was originally talked about. Some of the existing stores in the strip have banded together and are getting brand new free standing buildings in the front corners of the parking lot along with all the new paving, medians, and striping that they were in desperate need of. From the way it is reported, it won't affect any of their leases and the shift should be of benefit to them (as will the increase in customer influx to that strip).

Every night I drive by on the way home I have to pause for a second and look at all the scrap and wish I had some way to gather up all those Ibeams, and copper pipe, and brick and turn it in to a scrap yard for a hefty profit. Unfortunately, the site is chainlinked off from prying public, it has a near 24 hour security detail and crews that work on minor clean up (whatever can be done without heavy machinery and excessive noise) into the twilight hours.

Ah well. There aren't that many toys I need the extra funds for ...