After a few preliminary items, Whitewater’s 5/10/10 Planning Commission meeting considered Walmart’s proposal for a significant expansion at its present location. A video recording of the meeting is available at http://blip.tv/file/3624624. The agenda with a memo from Vandewalle & Associates about the Walmart expansion is available at Planning Commission Agenda & Attached Documents.
The documents to which I have linked are the only ones that the City of Whitewater uploaded prior to the May 10th meeting, on any topic on the agenda. One agenda, and one consultant’s memo.
City Staff. I’ve teased before about the pretentious way that city bureaucrats refer to ‘staff’ doing this, or ‘staff’ doing that. Perhaps, I’m idiosyncratic in this regard, but it seems stuffy to me, and puffed up. It might just be a consequence of my underlying doubts about bureaucrats…
While city staff is hard at work, I don’t think it would be too much to ask that they assure all the materials distributed at a meeting are placed online. At 21:54, Bruce Parker mentions documents in the Planning Commissioners’ packets. Those documents were not placed online before the meeting, and they should have been, as a matter of good policy. I know that one could request these documents through a records request, but a resident should not have to go to that trouble. As a good policy of open government, the City of Whitewater should upload all documents for the Planning Commission meeting, not just a paltry two (one of which was the agenda).
City manager Kevin Brunner’s stated commitment to “serving our citizens and visitors with excellent customer service” would mean more if he made certain that relevant documents in the possession of city staff were on line, on time, for easy citizen review.
Façade Concerns. In the Vandewalle packet, and at the meeting beginning at 23:30, one hears concerns about the façade of the building being “uninviting, stark, and lacking in architectural details” and “sterile.” I’m not sure if this is serious, or a trivial straw-man complaint that’s designed to distract from bigger issues.
If it’s serious, then it’s just a waste of time. I have no regard for paid consultants, supping on the taxpayers’ money, playing the role of designers and architects. If people want to live their lives as interior designers, decorators, or architects, then they should find private employment — at private compensation — in those fields. Those who want to fuss over design should go out, by a large property, with their own money, and have at it. I’m not convinced — at all — that a few politicians and bureaucrats have any better understanding of aesthetics than Walmart, Walmart’s customers, or anyone pulled out of a phone book. (I know that the Planning Commission includes municipal authority for architectural review. I’d just say that the authority runs ahead of discernible talent.)
(I will also give no credence to any taxpayer-paid consultant, having objected in a memo to Walmart’s aesthetics, who himself shows up at public meeting in a brown shirt, open collar. The City of Whitewater’s municipal building may be many things, but it’s not a third-rate discotheque.)
I think, by the way, the design looks good, and better than the existing design. Here are two screenshots of the proposal:
I think these photos show a more attractive façade than the one on the Walmart in Jefferson, Wisconsin, by the way.
Deals for Walmart, Rather than at Walmart. I’d guess Walmart’s thinking about expanding to make money, not as a charitable contribution to the people of Whitewater. Fine by me — prosperity on this continent has come about by private, voluntary mutual exchanges between buyers and sellers. I wouldn’t expect more of Walmart than other businesses, but I wouldn’t want less from them, either. They should accommodate parking adequately, as the City of Whitewater expects in its ordinances. Walmart should be striving to meet a required standard that other businesses have to meet, reflecting the difference only in size.
Some small merchant gets badgered about a sandwich board, or how many square feet something is, and that’s wrong. It’s doubly wrong to let Walmart skirt rules on parking when owners of other, smaller concerns get hit over their heads on that point. If there’s a requirement that in a zoning district like this (B1) for a “minimum of 30 percent of the lot to be landscaped surface area,” the Walmart shouldn’t be given a break that others would likely never get. If Walmart can show a real impact from plantings, etc., as our ordinances allow, only then should they be allowed to go below our the 30% minimum.
To offer breaks would be a kind of corporate care package that Walmart does not need, and smaller merchants wouldn’t get.
There’s a good deal to be had here, setting aside trivial concerns about aesthetics for more important matters of traffic flow and the surface area on the Walmart lot, among others.
Walmart will be back with proposal at a subsequent meeting, and it is on these matters than a serious examination should concern itself, as the basis of a good deal.