Saturday, April 30, 2005

Do you think cities should be able to do this?

I recently saw on the Des Moines Register website (hit the link below for the article there) that the West Des Moines City Council is stipulating that the proposed Wal Mart Supercenter must be closed from 10pm to 8am monday to saturday and must close by 9pm sunday. Walmart is saying that this may not be legal to have those restrictions, and they are probably correct. When there are other stores not too far away that are open 24 hours, I would think that would be hard to justify. The store in question would be near Jordan Creek Mall, apparently some neighbors are concerned about trash blowing around off their lot and about the noise from trucks coming in at night. I would think they could as a compromise limit the hours deliveries could be made there. I know of a store in Cedar Rapids (not a walmart) that is in a residential area and is open 24 hours but has restrictions on when deliveries can be made, I believe they can't have them between 10pm and 6 or 7am.

What would probably happen if Walmart sues and loses is that they will build a store in a nearby suburb like Waukee or Urbandale or Clive. True it would not be in the mall but they could probably get close enough to it to do good business.

Here is the link:
http://www.dmregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050422/NEWS05/504220361/1001/NEWS

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The rules should be the same for all stores in a given area. I'm impressed that West Des Moines has arranged for the wind that would blow the trash to disappear from 10 pm to 6 am. Too bad Indianola didn't think of that years ago for the hot air balloon event.

The story also mentions a way public officials try to get around open meetings laws by meeting with someone one at a time or in small groups. If someone meets in person with more than one elected official, they should meet with all of them at the usual meeting place and time.

10:49 PM, May 27, 2005  

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