While Wal-Mart is not everything or all things, it is something. I do not believe in the dooms day prediction of Packard Ave. if Wal-Mart comes to Cudahy. I do believe that Wal-Mart is a piece of the puzzle towards recovery in Cudahy. I do believe that Lee Barzcak can still and will still find tenants of the public market. I feel it will actually get easier for him once Cudahy Station is finalized either way for the clogs Lee needs to find to complete his wheel called the Public Market.
I will say, as I have said before, that a few places will choose to close along Packard Ave. I will say that even though I thought it was a bad idea, that some of the shops will move from Packard Ave to the Cudahy Shops (mainly the cell phone shops) and will have a negative effect since it will leave open a shop on Packard Ave. I will say that by 2011 as many if not more places along the “heart of downtown,” as Mayor McCue likes to call Packard Ave, will be filled.
I will state this again for those who choose to not understand or if it was my fault for not making it clear. I don’t love Wal-Mart, I like to shop there and would have fought just as tough, hard, and loud if it was a Target, Kohl’s, Costco, K-Mart (of course people then would have said I was biased for working at K-Mart) or any big box store. I think having a big box store in that area which is NOT downtown was fine and is fine. It is not as if there will be row after row of big box stores. I have asked many people to define where Cudahy’s downtown was and is and never received a good description. I got many well, this or this, but never right here to there. If you listen to the Master Plan Guy, it is in flux moving west along Layton and will end on Pennsylvania. He talks as if it is a trolley car.
In the end, or more correctly to say as time moves forward, a big box at that location will be just fine. Would it have been nice for Quad to come? Sure but they high tailed it back to Pewaukee. Could Cudahy have sat on the land until the right thing happen? Sure, just ask all the single people still looking for their soul mates after many years, how that is working? How long do you wait, a year, two, five, ten, twenty? Could Cudahy have found someone else willing to be the big box store? Sure, but Wal-Mart was not the first to be asked, but the seventh. How would it have looked if we sat on the land and after five years it was still a Wal-Mart?
What you have to ask yourself is why didn’t those other big box stores want to come to Cudahy. If the Wal-Mart goes through, Cobalt Partners will have it easier to get their big box store. For one reason, Wal-Mart will have blazed the way. Two, for Wal-Mart is now not on Cobalt’s list and Three, Wal-Mart equals traffic, which equals success and profits. So the other big box store will know Wal-Mart will drive people into Cudahy even if those people are just Cudahy and St. Francis people.
A tip to Cobalt Partners, if you need someone to be the voice for your development just ask me, I will help. It doesn’t matter who it is I will help. I am very pro-business, yet I understand we cannot give it all away for free. The other side is, it takes money to make money and there is a cost of doing business. Others would like to try and single handily give me credit for helping to give a push for the Wal-Mart when the push was needed. And those are the people against the project not those in favor. I am not willing to take such credit. I am a voice, but a single voice.
So Cobalt Partners if it is an IKEA, hell everyone will be for that, but if it is Shopko I will fight along side of you to champion the cause. I will take the criticism that I must be being paid by them, promised a job, or I love them, just for the cause. It will benefit Cudahy even if the naysayers don’t think so.
If people took the time to know me, they would understand me. Some people love me, hate me, don’t care for me, like me, know me, don’t understand me, can’t figure me out, get me, or just plain don’t care about me. That is all okay will me. I was never trying to make enemies nor was I looking to make friends. I most likely made both. That is all okay will me as long as you have enough respect for me to respect my right to be. That is all okay will me as long as you have the respect for yourself to respect me and my family.
The city will do what is needed with the business conditions to make the needed protections. I do have a suggestion that was once talked about that is no longer seen. Have the developer put the water park connected to the or in the hotel, as it was first hyped up. Push them to make the retention pond people friendly. Push them to make more offices above the smaller retail shops to have more mixed use. Push them to make the building look good within reason. Push them to have a big American flag displayed.
While moving forward understand that I have not gained anything personally from any of this, expect what we all gain, that is choices. To shop there or not. To have the convenience or not. To have lower prices or not to care. It is not the silver bullet. It is penicillin to a patient that has multiple illnesses. It is the shot in the arm and is now up to time and the rest of the antibiotics with treatments to fix the city. We cannot stay in the past or idle in the present, but move forward.
With statements of don’t call or say he doesn’t love Wal-Mart I almost feel the crusade to stick up for Wal-Mart since so many think they are evil. I will not though. Wal-Mart is a big company and has plenty of ways on their own to do so.
Remember twenty years ago at the excitement when Wal-Mart was first coming to the Milwaukee area? The jubilee people had for this now concerted evil place. I have stated this before, when the Wal-Mart came to Milwaukee I was at the Hales Corners K-Mart. Mike Koehler and I would drive over and compare prices and match them. Just as the Walgreen’s Corp person told me that the sales will dip and then go up. That is what happened at K-Mart in Hales Corners. Mike Koehler who also lives in Cudahy can back that up.
While two years is a long time from now I am sure those places will be just fine. You can call them if you like, hey as humblepie said I am just an idiot off the street. So you can call I posted all the info including who I talked to. Verify it for yourself!
Wal-Mart reaching fuel goals for truck fleet: exec
The world's largest retailer also plans to introduce hybrid trucks into its fleet of more than 7,000 trucks later this year, said Matt Kistler, senior vice president of sustainability for Wal-Mart.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN1347612420080613
