From the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Supersurprise

Wal-Mart at Steelyard Commons will be a welcome reality, because no one on City Council was minding the store

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Whatever you might think of building a suburban-style shopping center on the site of an old steel mill in Cleveland's Industrial Valley, whatever you might think about the retail leviathan that is Wal-Mart, you have got to admire developer Mitchell Schneider's tenacity. And you have to marvel at the ineptitude of those who tried to derail his Steelyard Commons project.

Recall that Schneider asked for no subsidies to build his $120 million shopping center. His plans violated no zoning rules. They had been vetted by the City Planning Commission. They promised to bring retail and job options to Cleveland and to contribute millions of dollars to the city's treasury and its cash-starved schools.

Despite that, by late February, a group of Cleveland City Council members - egged on by union leaders - had the project on life support.

First, Councilman Joe Cimperman, a supposed supporter of Steelyard Commons, introduced legislation to limit the size of stores that sell even a small amount of groceries. The legislation was theoretically designed to block a Wal-Mart supercenter - a combination discount store and grocery - but actually would have prevented any supermarket of the size commonly built in Cleveland suburbs from locating in the city. It also would have stifled developments that did not involve Wal-Mart.

Council President Frank Jackson tried to broker a deal, working with Schneider on an alternative to detail standards for "big box" stores. But Wal-Mart executives, already skeptical about a Cleveland store without groceries, balked at its preamble, which all but labeled such retail a public nuisance. They announced that they would not locate at Steelyard Commons - or anywhere else in Cleveland - anytime soon.

Schneider scrambled to find a new anchor, zeroing in on one retailer that wanted big subsidies. Meanwhile, Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, who had been rightly outraged by council's interference, continued to woo Wal-Mart executives. She and Jackson met with company officials in late March to pitch the city. Schneider kept talking to them, too.

Those efforts paid off. Wal-Mart recently told Schneider it would come to Steelyard Commons after all - if it could build a supercenter immediately. Since the winter debacle, Schneider's lawyers had told him that if he filed for building permits before any ordinance was passed, his plan would not be subject to any new zoning requirements.

So he did. Schneider and Wal-Mart signed their deal Tuesday morning. Within minutes, the developer delivered detailed architectural drawings to the city and pulled building permits. As word of the move filtered through City Hall, even Cimperman agreed there was nothing supercenter opponents could do - other than grouse about being blindsided.

Of course, if their concern had really been the impact of large-scale retail, they might have actually moved legislation over the last 2½ months. But the uproar was really always about Wal-Mart - because its policies irritate organized labor and because a superstore might hurt the city's existing, unionized groceries. Once the bogeyman seemed to have been vanquished, the legislative watchdogs moved on - though Cimperman found time Monday to accept a labor award for scuttling Wal-Mart.

There's much to criticize about Wal-Mart's business practices, but let's be honest: Wal-Mart is already in this market. City residents regularly trek to its suburban stores. Why shouldn't they be able to shop closer to home - in stores that employ their neighbors and pay taxes to support city services - if they choose? A full-service Wal-Mart at Steelyard Commons surely will hurt some city merchants, including grocery stores. Any new enterprise may hurt someone's business; that's called competition.

But study after study has shown that more than $1 billion a year leaches out of the city because consumers can't spend it in Cleveland. Simply put, this city has a dearth of shopping options, most notably supermarkets.

Steelyard Commons will neither save Cleveland nor destroy it. But the fact that a major developer is willing to put up his own money to bet on Cleveland is a good sign. It's the fact that he was forced to tiptoe past its City Council that ought to worry people.