Let’s be brutally honest, shall we? And I mean to cast no aspersions on Walmart, but when even Walmart finally packs up and skedaddles out of your city, it’s a strong indication that your city is in pretty bad shape. And when Lori Lightfoot is your mayor, you live in Chicago, and you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Closing stores isn’t rare for Walmart, particularly given its more than 5,000 stores nationwide. As ABC affiliate WLS-TV in Chicago reported the giant retailer closed 160 stores over the past couple of years, but with 5,000 stores the company has to be flexible and the bottom line is, literally, it has to go where the business is, and just as importantly, leave where it isn’t.
The company declined to provide specific reasons to local media for the closure of the three stores, but Walmart’s decision is just one more reminder of Greater Chicagoland’s decadelong decline.
Chicago’s population and tax base have shrunk for nine straight years, while crime continues to soar. Yet, the city is about to adopt no-cash bail, which makes it nearly impossible for police to enforce the law against thieves. Businesses don’t like that, of course, but guess who does? Her picture “might” be below.
It just means the thieves drive a little farther and the local residents get a retail desert.
I read an article several years ago about Walmart. It was when they were really booming in terms of adding new stores, and essentially, what was happening was towns/states were offering huge subsidies/tax breaks to get them to come into their area. Walmart would then build new stores, and reap the benefits that don’t just come through their registers. Once time lapses on them as some aren’t paid in perpetuity, they’d close up and move somewhere else with a fresh round of benefits, leaving monsterous buildings that no one else can go into.
I thought it was going to be about Ghettobury 21801