The fight over a proposed new development in Pullman on the far south side has so far been focused on whether it should include a new Walmart, and the development’s main cheerleader in the City Council, Ninth Ward alderman Anthony Beale, has defended the inclusion of the controversial retailer by saying it’s his only choice—several other big-box firms have turned him down. He’s made it sound like he was on a mad dash to find a prom date, and all the pretty girls were already taken.
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Last month Beale told the Chicago Plan Commission, which has to sign off on such projects, that he’d hoped to avoid another Walmart showdown in the City Council. Back in 2004 the council narrowly approved plans for the city’s first Walmart, on the west side, but shot down a proposal for another on the south side. Two years later Walmart critics in the council—including Beale—passed the so-called living-wage ordinance, a union-backed measure that would have required big-box retailers to pay at least $10 an hour plus $3 in benefits. But Mayor Daley vetoed it, and supporters couldn’t muster the votes to override the veto.
“Walmart wasn’t our first choice,” Beale told the plan commission shortly before it rubber-stamped the project. “I worked with the unions as far as trying to get other retailers to come to this particular site.”
“No one at all has contacted Jewel-Osco about building a store in the development,” spokeswoman Karen May e-mailed.
David Doig, a former Park District superintendent, heads the nonprofit developer for the project, Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives. He says a broker for a firm called Mid-America Real Estate contacted other brokers who work with the retailers, and the broker, Dick Spinell, provided reports on those contacts and their results. But Doig declined to share the reports. “Those are in-house documents,” he said. Spinell did not return calls for this story.
Still, he said, it’s possible the broker approached the retailers about both sites.
