[hga]

Can't speak to the statistic claimed, which does sound a little out there, but I can certainly testify that multiple millionaires shop at this Wal-Mart: http://www.walmart.com/store/59

Store 59 is also sort of a special case, in that when they leased their first building for it in the '70s, it was at least twice the size of anything they'd leased before, and became the proving ground for their Supercenters. And they made a point of rebuilding and reopening the second building on the site within 6 months after it got destroyed by the 2011 tornado (granted, that was easier since they didn't lose much of their employee pool (no one was killed in that Wal-Mart, but I'm sure some moved away because of the housing shortage), they were all very busy at the 2 other Wal-Marts in the area in the interim).

To provide a personal anecdote, one of those multimillionaires was my father, who in the early '60s was a low level manager at a Ben Franklin "Five and Dime" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_(company) ) in Joplin when Sam Walton, who owned a set of them down in Arkansas, would regularly drive up to Joplin for airplane trips. He'd always stop by and talk to the owner and managers of this (set of?) Joplin (area?) Ben Franklins, getting a feel for what was going on here. Very smart guy (certainly smarter than the Joplin owner, who declined the offer to invest in Walton's new venture...).

Stepping back to the general question, the crime patterns in Joplin area's four Wal-Marts pretty much match the neighborhoods they're in. Before anyone can claim Wal-Mart is doing a bad job here, they've got to correct for that.

Although I can't speak to the stories people are telling of poorly managed ones, only that I've never seen or heard of such here, the stores are well run and to my observation, pretty much all the employees but some of the cashiers are reasonably happy/satisfied with their jobs/whatever.

[will_brown]

It is mind blowing how many Walmarts there are in Bentonville, it honestly just doesn't make sense, but they are a good reflection of well kept WM stores.

Coincidentally I went to the Joplin store too while visiting Bentonville. Coming from Miami I have to admit I had zero interest in Bentonville aside from the business opportunity, but I was actually in awe of Bentonville, in particular the downtown area and Crystal Bridges Museum were exceptionally charming, and I was surprised to find locals actually had a tremendous amount of gratitude for WM and the Walton family (in my experience such wealth and influence can generate resentment). For what it is worth, I even decided I would return just to run the Bentonville half marathon.

[kbutler]

Anecdotally, when our ~40K population town got a Walmart, the police department needed to add a full-time officer position to handle the increase in crime.

(per city council member, many disclaimers apply)

[hga]

Was that because it was attracting a lot more people/visits from out of town? Also, not that it matters for your city's residents, but did anyone check for displacement effects, is the same amount of crime (with the usual adjustments) happening in the region serviced by it?

It's likely many of those people will also be spending additional money elsewhere in town on their additional visits (at least, that happens in Joplin a lot, although the #1 component of that is almost certainly our 2 hospital/healthcare centers), so did anyone try to figure out if the city financially benefited at net?

Not that that matters all that much if additional crime outside the Wal-Mart is hurting its residents. Or if that politician was lying, as far too many city council members seem wont to do :-(.

[gozur88]

How much additional tax revenue did they get?

[msisk6]

My dad was targeted in a fake parking lot accident con at the Walmart in Joplin on west 7th.

As you say, the crime patterns pretty much match the neighborhoods the stores are in and that ain't in a good one.