Gresham inches closer to getting WalMart

First they get spanky new signage. Now the newly polished burg of Gresham has the opportunity to squabble over a potential WalMart Supercenter:

Today the City of Gresham deemed Wal-Mart's application to build a Supercenter at 182nd Avenue and Powell Boulevard complete.

When an application is deemed complete, the City has the information necessary to review a development to determine if it complies, or can comply with the standards and criteria of the City's Development Code. The date of application completeness also marks the start of the official review period, which lasts 120 days. The 120 days includes time allotted for a local appeal to a Hearings Officer.

The next step in the process is sending out a notice for the public comment period. The City expects the notice to be mailed on May 11. The public will have 14 days from the date on the notice to submit written comments to the file. If individual who submits a comment wishes to receive notice of the final decision by mail, their comments must include a legible name and address.

Yay. Now its Gresham's turn to hold public meetings where overwhelming numbers of residents show up to complain about WalMart. And then WalMart makes all sorts of changes to their plan..promising to make things all nice and efficient and easy for the city...and more citizens show up to complain..and WalMart makes more changes.

But the changes are just window dressing. There's only so much lipstick you can't paint on a pig.

WalMart is like a plague of locusts that feed on an area and render it a wasteland. What anti-WalMartians (heh) should do is threaten to unionize the potential stores. That'll scare em off.