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Walmart will open its new Neighborhood Market on Santa Rita Road in Pleasanton at 7:30 a.m. this morning with a festive ribbon-cutting hosted by the Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce and welcomng remarks by Mayor Jerry Thorne.
The 33,000-square-foot supermarket is located in the Meadow Plaza shopping center south of West Las Positas Boulevard in the store once occupied by Nob Hill, which was closed three years ago. Merchants in Meadow Plaza, which adjoins the Santa Rita Square Center, who have been waiting anxiously for a new large anchor grocer to move in to help revitalize their businesses, will participate in this morning’s ceremony.
“We’ll have a lot of festivities and special offers,” said Alton Wheeler, Pleasanton store manager.
A preview walk-through of the new market showed the shelves neatly stacked with a variety of merchandise typically found in a major supermarket.
Facing the store, general merchandising section is on the right, featuring health and beauty products, paper towels and much more. Fresh produce and packaged goods are on the left with food in cooling units and frozen goods in the center. Meat, fish and bakery good are along the back aisle of the store.
Walmart has revamped the Nob Hill store with wider aisles, new entry and exit doors, high white-painted ceilings with brilliant lighting and a pharmacy. Check-out stands line the front of the store with some set up for self-checkout and computer stations that keep track of inventory as well as customer suggestions.
“We want to listen to our customers and have them tell us what they’re looking for and what they need,” Wheeler said. “Every Walmart market has the ability to tailor its merchandise and service to meet what customers want.”
That includes a coffee bar, which Wheeler’s store doesn’t have. If enough shoppers and commuters stopping at the store on their way to work want coffee and a donut, Wheeler said he’ll put the service in.
Wheeler has hired 85 employees (called associates at Walmart) and they’re all now at work in the store, completing training programs, stacking shelves and price-coding incoming jars of baby food and canned foods and other products in a maze of boxes vendors have been delivering.
Overhead, construction crews have finished installing and adjusting new ceiling lights and crossbars for holding information signs.
The Walmart store opening was delayed for more than a year by protests before the Pleasanton Planning Commission and City Council over allowing Walmart to add one of its Neighborhood Markets here.
Former Councilman Matt Sullivan and union representatives opposed Walmart’s bid, claiming that Walmart pays its employees “below scale” wages and benefits and that, as a non-union grocer, it could undercut other grocery stores in the way it prices merchandise.
But because Walmart was taking over an old supermarket that already had the city’s approval, it was given an operating permit based on that prior approval and property use.
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I suppose I’ll start a comment-page argument here, but I can only
respond to WalMart by pointing out how low-cost choices like this end up costing us in other ways:
Here is a quote from the following link: http://www.ilsr.org/new-study-finds-walmarts-miserly-wages-cost-taxpayers/
“California taxpayers are spending $86 million a year providing healthcare and other public assistance to the state’s 44,000 Wal-Mart employees, according to a new study by UC Berkeley’s Institute for Industrial Relations.
The study, “Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs,” found that the average Wal-Mart worker required $730 in taxpayer-funded healthcare and $1,222 in other forms of assistance, such as food stamps and subsidized housing, to get by.”
The store is scheduled to open next Wednesday.
Long time coming!!
Before you shop at Walmart take a little time and watch the movie – Walmart: The High Cost Of Low Prices. It is on YouTube. Changed my mind about shopping at Walmart.
I’ll show ’em . . . . . I’ll go to Safeway instead and pay 3 – 4 times as much for the same item.
This morning’s news on KTVU reported that union anarchists will be bussed into Pleasanton in an attempt to harass and intimidate local shoppers. And that’s the union way……