by Murray Carpenter

You could be anywhere in the U.S. here, listening to the specials over the loudspeakers, walking through the miles of aisles of inexpensive merchandise. This is but one of 2,500 Wal-Mart stores scattered around the country. But step out into the expansive parking lot, walk around back and slip past a few red oaks, and you'll smell the salt air and see a large bay full of lobster boats. It's the coast of Maine, Rockland to be precise, where Wal-Mart has turned into a flashpoint for a rapidly changing community. In dispute is the corporate giant's plan to abandon this 90,000-square-foot facility and build a new "supercenter," twice as big, across the street.

Here, as elsewhere, the question being asked is: Do local citizens really want an expanded presence in their still distinctive community of a global retailer with a cookie-cutter, cheapest-knows-no-limits mentality?

At this Wal-Mart on a sunny Wednesday in February, the answer is, apparently, yes. By noon there are well over 100 cars in the parking lot, ranging from sport utility vehicles with cell phones and vanity plates to little old Japanese beaters. A few cars even sport lefty stickers, including one advertising the local grassroots radio station that frequently runs shows criticizing corporate America and rampant globalization.

Why the mad rush to Wal-Mart? Cost, shoppers say, and convenience. Indeed, things are cheap as heck inside. Fashionable earth-tone t-shirts made in Peru cost $7.94; button-down, 100 percent cotton, pinstriped shirts made in Gatar fetch $15.94; and a fleece "Ozark Trail" vest made in Taiwan goes for $11.94. Leather children's shoes made in China cost less than $10, and steel-toed rubber boots with a U.S. label bring $14.97.

A large sign in the rear of the store reads, "Bring it home to the U.S.A." And just inside the front door on a little table covered by a tablecloth reading "I (heart) Wal-Mart" and covered in smiley faces, a sign asks, "Do you support a Wal-Mart Supercenter? Sign here." Next to the loose-leaf binder is a bouquet of roses, wrapped in plastic. A few of the comments:

"Just what we need."

"I think it's a good idea."

"I'm all for it."

"We need a bigger and better Wal-Mart."

And, "Need it bad."

This type of enthusiasm has propelled Wal-Mart to its position as the largest retailer in the world -- and the largest private employer in the U.S. Wal-Mart spokesperson Keith Morris reports that Wal-Mart had $137 billion in sales and $4.4 billion in net revenue for the year ending in January 1999. And the retail giant keeps getting bigger, adding more services. Recently, in fact, Wal-Mart issued its own private label credit card.

A contentious local debate over the Rockland Wal-Mart has focused on taxes, traffic, aesthetics and the zoning change the city would have to approve for the new supercenter. But there are broader concerns about the effects of globalization simmering just below the surface. These local and global issues often come up for discussion at the Good Tern Co-op, a health food market in a white clapboard building near the heart of Rockland's downtown. It's just a five-minute pedal south of Wal-Mart.

"This is kind of the potbelly stove, cracker-barrel center of a lot of this debate," says Good Tern employee Lizzie Dickerson. She is among many locals who say, "The Wal-Mart we have is Wal-Mart enough," and has led a petition drive opposing the zoning change. In a nutshell, Dickerson says, "For a lot of people it's like the antithesis of their life, why they live here."

The Good Tern is certainly the antithesis of Wal-Mart. The contrasts are dramatic. Wal-Mart is designed to accommodate shoppers who arrive by car, not foot. Its traffic-clogged Route 1 location is unwelcoming to pedestrians at any season, but especially in the winter when the sidewalks remain unplowed. Downtown Rockland, by contrast, is a walker's dream, being a compact set of retail blocks with good sidewalks and easy-to-negotiate crosswalks. Wal-Mart is an enormous windowless box, but morning sunlight streams in through large storefront windows at the tiny Co-op, the whole of which could fit in the small cafeteria just inside Wal-Mart's entrance. Most strikingly, the line between customer, employee and owner is blurred at the co-op. As Dickerson says, "We pay 20 bucks and we're [instantly] co-owners."

But it's not just the increased traffic and required zoning changes that make her oppose the new store, Dickerson says, it's what Wal-Mart represents as a global power.

"Wal-Mart is the symbol of schlock: Buy cheap, build it cheap at any cost, including labor practices that are questionable," she says. "These sorts of businesses are causing the erosion of the standard of living of the people of this country, while at the same time saying they are trying to improve it."

Dickerson isn't the only Wal-Mart foe downtown. A block north, on Rockland's narrow Main Street, sits Goodnow's Pharmacy. This morning Arthur Johnson is sitting at the soda fountain counter, as he does most mornings. What does he think of the planned supercenter? "I hate it," says the retired cabinet maker, who used to visit Goodnow's for ice cream sodas in his youth. "You can see the damage they've already done up there, the asphalt jungle I call it. I've been here 71 years, what do I know? But if they pass it, something's wrong somewhere."

But even in Goodnow's, the quintessential Main Street business to which Wal-Mart is supposed to be the death knell, Johnson's feeling's are not universal. Patty Young, tending the till, said, "I like Wal-Mart -- one-stop shopping." Another woman agrees, "I think it would be excellent for the area. I go to Augusta, Portland or Boston to shop because there's nothing here." But when Johnson suggests perhaps Young would like to get a job at Wal-Mart, she responds that they'd never pay her what she makes at Goodnow's. He nods, "See?"

Two doors down from Goodnow's, Skip Thompson is holding a sale to liquidate the inventory from Coffin's, a longtime downtown Rockland outlet for clothing, footwear and cosmetics. Thompson ran the store for 20 years, and says his closing down is related to Wal-Mart's showing up.

"In a general sense," he says, "Wal-Mart drains local economies -- it costs everybody."

When Wal-Mart shows up with cheap goods at cheap prices, Thompson says it is understandable that people will shop there, but small businesses suffer.

"The little guy's going to take the heat," he says. "That $20 million or so has to come out of someone's hide."

Globalization is evident in Coffin's too. On a table along one wall are Hathaway dress shirts, union-made in Maine. But on a rack just inside the door are sweatshirts made in Russia, emblazoned, in California, with a "Maine" logo. But Thompson feels the global economy can "definitely improve conditions worldwide. It's a question of advocating for people in third world countries so they're not at starvation levels. It means the wealth is going to spread."

After the liquidation sale, Thompson and his wife are looking at a "major life change," but don't know exactly what it will be. They have applied for the Peace Corps.

What will become of downtown Rockland when Coffin's, and Thompson, leave?

"I think what we'll end up with is shops like we have here, " says Thompson pointing across the street at the Wine Seller, one of many upscale businesses that have moved in near the expanding Farnsworth Museum and its new Wyeth Center. "I think the downtown will be fun, and the outskirts will be necessary."

But Thompson doesn't speak for everyone downtown. A few blocks further north, in the insurance office where he works, Mayor James Raye is nothing but boosterish about Wal-Mart. When businesses are looking to move to Rockland, Raye says, there's that window of opportunity, and he wants to make sure that window is open.

"Wal-Mart is very successful. They buy by the truckload when other businesses around here buy by the boxload," says Raye. "Do I subsidize the downtown merchants? This is still free enterprise, isn't it?"

Wal-Mart, Raye says, is bringing a payroll of $5.5 million, 350 jobs, and a 401K plan, "along with an opportunity." Wal-Mart is also chipping in for municipal erosion and drainage studies.

"We are not in a position to throw away tax dollars," Raye says, citing recent expenses in cash-strapped Rockland. Grabbing a calculator he quickly tallies $16 million or so, for roads, schools, sewers, that Rockland's 7,900 residents are having to shoulder with one of the highest tax rates in the state.

With respect to the proposed supercenter, Raye says that, for him, only four items are of concern: traffic, the appearance of the building, the buffer, and runoff. If Wal-Mart can meet the city's conditions, he'll vote for the zoning change. If two of the four city councilors agree, the deal is a go.

"I would say 75-85 percent of Rockland wants Wal-Mart out there," he says, adding that he has seen 800 signatures of Wal-Mart shoppers who want the store. As for the old building, Wal-Mart has assured Raye "it won't see a dark day," and he hopes another "big box" retailer, perhaps Home Depot, will move in.

Raye, whose wife has a downtown store selling Hallmark Cards, believes Wal-Mart won't have any effect on downtown business.

"We spent a lot of money to get the Hallmark franchise. Now Wal-Mart sells Hallmark cards and I'm fighting for it. Each and every year since they've been here, we've grown," Raye says. The businesses cannot only co-exist, but can also help each other, he claims. Downtown business owners will "just have to sharpen their pencils.

"To each his own. There are people that shop the Wal-Marts and people that shop downtown," says the mayor. "We need to have some balance. A lot of people would like to have it be a tourist town. What we need is more stores like Wal-Mart that draw people here. They'll take a stroll downtown and say 'Hey, this is nice.'"

Keith Morris, the Wal-Mart spokesperson, agrees.

"The downtown has not died since Wal-Mart opened." Morris says the main difference with the supercenter is a new 40-45,000 square foot grocery store. Since there is no longer a large grocery store in downtown Rockland, this new grocery store will be competing with Rockland's two other supermarkets, both located in shopping centers with large parking lots on the fringes of the city. Shop 'n Save, Wal-Mart's direct competition, says it will expand to meet the supercenter challenge. The Shop 'n Save chain, until recently owned by Maine's Hannaford Brothers, was bought out by Delhaize America last year. So Wal-Mart is competing most directly with another global power retailer.

While he claims the supercenter won't hurt downtown, Morris is pretty clear on another point: If Wal-Mart does not get approval to build at the Rockland site, they will likely take their business elsewhere, and "that's going to have a detrimental effect on business locally." Already some residents of the neighboring town of Thomaston have started a petition drive inviting Wal-Mart to build there.

Morris takes criticism of the corporate giant in stride. How about the claims of censorship, Wal-Mart refusing to sell some CD's and dictating sexual morality by refusing to sell the so-called morning-after pill? Morris responds in broad terms: "We do have a responsibility to adhere to our company standards and customer standards. There's just certain things (such as magazines that come in plain brown wrappers) that are not in line with our company philosophy, and our customers have told us, overwhelmingly, that they feel the same way."

How about matters of global equity, and the conditions in the sweatshops manufacturing for the Wal-Marts? "We have what we call a statement of vendor standards," Morris says. "Every company we work with has to sign that agreement and adhere to it." The agreement encompasses fair compensation, reasonable work hours, and forbids child or forced labor. Morris claims Wal-Mart performed nearly 1,000 surprise factory inspections last year, and has stopped doing business with hundreds of manufacturers due to poor working conditions.

But Bob Ortega, author of In Sam We Trust, the Untold Story of Sam Walton and How Wal-Mart is Devouring America, found children working in Guatemalan factories manufacturing clothes for Wal-Mart and other retailers. Most recently Wal-Mart and 16 other retailers, have been subjects of a class action lawsuit over sweatshop conditions on Saipan, a Pacific island in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

While the global issues get tossed around occasionally, the discussion in Rockland is usually about the intensely local aspects of the supercenter: traffic, zoning and taxes. Over at the Good Tern, Dickerson says, "People are naturally concerned about what's around them. Globalization is a difficult issue, it's too big." As Dickerson stands next to the organic produce, one co-op member is stocking five-pound bags of fairly traded Equal Exchange coffee. Across the aisle a small hand-lettered card next to some colorful placemats reads, "Place mats are made by a woman's cooperative in Nepal." Dickerson looks around and says she believes it's possible to improve the global economy, "a little bit at a time."

It's the same approach Dickerson is taking with Wal-Mart. "People come in here and say we'll never be able to stop this, and I say, 'Yes we will.' We do have the power to do something. We're doing what we feel is right." l

Murray Carpenter is a freelance writer who lives in Belfast, Me., <romy@acadia.net>.