Walmart planned for endangered forest lands in South Florida

[mia]

Source: Miami Herald

One of the world’s rarest forests, a section of Miami-Dade County’s last intact tracts of endangered pine rockland, is getting a new resident: a Walmart.

About 88 acres of rockland, a globally imperiled habitat containing a menagerie of plants, animals and insects found no place else, was sold this month by the University of Miami to a Palm Beach County developer. To secure permission for the 185,000-square-foot box store, plus an LA Fitness, a Chik-fil-A, a Chili’s and about 900 apartments, the university and the developer, Ram, agreed to set aside 40 acres for a preserve. Ram also plans to develop another 35 adjacent acres still owned by the school.

But with less than 2 percent of the vast savanna that once covered South Florida’s spiny ridge remaining, the deal has left environmentalists and biologists scratching their heads.

“You wonder how things end up being endangered? This is how. This is bad policy and bad enforcement. And shame on UM,” said attorney Dennis Olle, a board member of Tropical Audubon and the North American Butterfly Association, who wrote Florida’s lead federal wildlife agent Friday demanding an investigation....


Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/12/4232296/walmart-planned-for-endangered.html#storylink=cpy


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/12/4232296/walmart-planned-for-endangered.html

[Omaha Steve]

1. Didn't Walmart build on Gettysburg battle location a few years ago?

Why don't they listen to people in the areas they want to build in?

[No Vested Interest]

8. I was just in Gettyburg 6 weeks ago and didn't see Walmart.

We did the auto-tour of the battlegrounds and visited the Eisenhower farm, etc.
I couldn't swear a Walmart wasn't there, but it didn't catch my eye.

[Omaha Steve]

10. (found it) Controversy over Wal-mart on Civil War battlefield

Any locals know if this was ever built? Type in just Walmart controversy to search and the search engine goes nuts.

http://gadling.com/2010/05/31/controversy-over-wal-mart-on-civil-war-battlefield/




by Sean McLachlan on May 31, 2010

A proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter on the site of one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles is being challenged by local preservationists.

The case has gone into a new phase as a local court ruled that opponents to the Wal-Mart have the right to bring the company to trial, reports Civil War News.

When the Orange County, Virginia, Board of Supervisors approved the construction of a 138,000 square-foot Wal-mart Supercenter at the edge of the Wilderness Battlefield, part of a National Battlefield Park, two preservation groups and six local residents sued. They say that the location is too close to the battlefield and will ruin its atmosphere.

The Battle of the Wilderness on May 5-7, 1864 was a brutal slugfest between the armies of Grant and Lee that left tens of thousands of Americans dead or wounded. Many historians see the battle as the start of a long war of attrition that bled the Confederacy to death.

FULL story at link.

[No Vested Interest]

12. Thanks for clarification. Orange county, VA, etc. mentioned.

According to Wikipedia, Walmart opened there in 2013.

Respectfully, not Gettysburg, PA.

I am no fan of Walmart.

[brett_jv]

15. Me either, but I couldn't give a crap about some Civil War battlefield ...

Where hundreds of Americans died, killing one another. I think it's kinda sick and morbid to want to 'preserve the site', personally.

A rare/endangered habitat, OTOH, is WELL worth saving. Like the world REALLY NEEDS another Wal-Mart, Chili's, Chik-fil-A, and LA fucking FITNESS. Yeah. No. Fuck that.

How much you wanna bet that under-funding of UoM by the state led to the Trustees deciding to sell lands to make $$$?

And how many State legislators in charge of deciding that funding ... also receive campaign funds from the Waltons?

[Omaha Steve]

17. Here is why I was thinking Gettysburg-Battle Over the Battlefields

http://www.newsweek.com/battle-over-battlefields-66651

A casino could soon sit near the Gettysburg battlefield, the bloodiest encounter on American soil. A Walmart supercenter may shadow the Wilderness battlefield in Virginia where Gen. U. S. Grant kept his headquarters when he first fought Gen. Robert E. Lee. And Washington, D.C.’s suburban sprawl is slowly strangling the rural lands where the Civil War’s first crucial battles were fought. It’s an ironic situation: as battlefield sites across the country prepare for an expected onslaught of visitors connected to the Civil War’s 150th anniversary, many of them are shrinking away, acre by acre.

April 12 will mark the sesquicentennial of the start of the war, and governments and citizens across the country are gearing up to commemorate it. Visitation at Civil War–related national parks has already been on the rise, increasing 6.4 percent between 2008 and 2009 after mostly flat numbers in prior years. The National Park Service has reworked its approach to teaching the war’s history to make it more focused on causes and effects. In anticipation of the anniversary, PBS plans to re-air Ken Burns’s landmark documentary on the war, and The New York Times and The Washington Post have already launched special commemorative blogs and news coverage. All the while, however, development at sites around the country is destroying Civil War battlefields at a frantic rate—30 acres a day, according to the Civil War Trust (CWT), a leading heritage conservation group—fast enough to eat up what’s left of the Gettysburg battlefield park in just seven months. “[Battlefield visitors] don’t want to see the parking lot where their ancestors once fought that’s now a shopping center,” says Jim Campi, policy director of CWT. “They want to walk through the woods and see the cannon and the fence lines.”

This month, two high-profile conflicts over further development on the sites of major battles will come to a head. Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board officials are expected to decide whether to allow a casino several miles southwest of the Gettysburg battlefield.. The Mason-Dixon Resort and Casino has become a cause célèbre for Civil War buffs, who have held it up as the best example of crass commercialism making inroads into the “hallowed ground” where more than 51,000 soldiers died. And in Virginia, a judge will hear arguments in a suit that aims to prevent the planned Walmart that is—depending on whom you ask—either adjacent to or on the Wilderness battlefield. These two standoffs are part of a larger debate that raises many of the same questions as the mosque controversy in lower Manhattan: What constitutes hallowed ground, what can you build near or on it, and how soon is too soon?

“There has to be a reasonable balance,” says James McPherson, the foremost living Civil War historian and professor emeritus of history at Princeton. “If you preserved every square foot of battlefield in Virginia, there wouldn’t be much land left. There’s a tendency among preservationists to want to save everything, but realistically there have to be compromises.”

FULL story at link.

[No Vested Interest]

23. Thank goodness no casino near Gettysburg Battlefield as well.

Apparently there are enough opponents to keep casinos out of the immediate area.

All casino licenses for PA are taken, and with casinos not getting the revenue that was expected, it's not likely that there will be anytime soon/

[blkmusclmachine]

2. Sick

[A Little Weird]

3. Damn

As if another Walmart is needed. Why can't they re-develop abandoned shopping centers for awhile instead of ripping up natural areas?

[mercuryblues]

24. because

the abandoned shopping centers anchor store was a walmart that closed and opened a super walmart down the road.

[secondvariety]

4. Not surprised

that Wal-Mart and Miami-Dade would pull this shit but I am surprised the University went along. Someone's palm is getting greased.

[valerief]

5. I'm waiting for the Capitol to officially turn into a Wal-Mart. nt

[AngryDem001]

6. Money, money, money

Money above plants and animals, money above people, money above education, money above EVERYTHING.

[Populist_Prole]

7. WTF is it with this push for more and more retail development anyway?

Malls, supercenters, big boxes, whatever. Over the years I've come to be astounded by this single-minded push more more retail, all-retail, all the time.....even in areas absolutely saturated by retail as it is!

I'm always hearing about a new shopping center being planned, as though absolutely necessary; because you'd otherwise have to travel 2.5 miles to find another one. It's almost as if they know damned well the market is saturated but the business plan's success rides not on new customers, but rather siphoning off customers from other retail outlets. I see that the mass graveyards of abandoned relatively young shopping centers is testament to that business model.

[sulphurdunn]

19. It's also ironic

that the country is littered with abandoned malls, and that Wal-mart is the largest owner of vacant retail space in America.

[oldandhappy]

9. Hate to be negative,

but honesty compels me to admit I hope it sinks in the next hurricane. Shame on UM indeed.

[rickyhall]

11. How does that song?

"Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot"

Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell

[NC_Nurse]

13. Well, if it's near Miami, it's probably going to all be underwater within the next century.

Sad about the wildlife, but I won't shed any tears for Walmart.

[americannightmare]

22. More like within the next couple of decades...

can't think of a more fitting fate for Walmart - unfortunately they'll be taking a lot of wildlife along with them. Capitalist psychopaths!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

14. Hey, trees need to chop, too. How else will they

Get huge cases of "kudzu-B-gone?"

[ramapo]

16. Souless bunch of life haters

It is really inconceivable how there can be such callous disregard for this tract of land.

Another Walmart is really necessary? There's no other place to put it?

Humans really don't deserve this planet.

[Duppers]

18. k & r

[greatlaurel]

20. This is where we need a real investigative reporter. This cannot be a good idea for development.

Last edited Sat Jul 12, 2014, 11:29 PM - Edit history (1)

There is no reason for this development as far as the need for retail space and the profit from the retail functions from this new strip mall. The real profit is the tax write-offs and financing of this development. Another question is why the University is selling this land at this time after holding on to it for so long.

Walmart stores are in a shambles across the country. The stores are dirty and very poorly stocked. Why in the world they are building any more stores should be investigated very thoroughly especially by the business press, because Walmart is looking more and more like some sort of Ponzi scheme rather than a retailer. Any company or pension funds that invests in Walmart should be very alarmed by the company's reckless behavior.

[DeSwiss]

21. ....