[Vision2020] Students Join Wal-Mart Fight

[Tom Hansen]

To those of you that feel all UI students actively support the construction
of a Wal-mart super center, I suggest you read the following article from
today's (February 10, 2006) UI Argonaut.

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Students join Wal-Mart fight    
Written by Sam Taylor - Argonaut  
   
Friday, 10 February 2006  

There's something deeply unsettling to Matt Ivers about a Wal-Mart
Supercenter. And he sees the land where the proposed store will go as a
place to help bolster a community that cares about the people in it.

That's why Ivers and others have started to circulate a petition on campus
to let the Moscow Planning and Zoning Commission members, as well as the
Moscow City Council, know that there are some people - he's hoping a lot -
around here who don't want the store to be built.

"I just think it's very important for people to understand what's going on
in their community," Ivers said. "Communities are in danger of getting lost,
and small towns like Moscow are great to live in."

Ivers, a University of Idaho architectural graduate student, said he began
to get interested in the Wal-Mart debate after happening upon the Moscow
NoSuperWal-Mart group's Web site and meeting others who were interested in
getting involved.

He joined NoSuperWal-Mart and even transformed his graduate thesis work so
that it fit into the Wal-Mart theme.

"The foundation of my project was how to sustain families," Ivers said.
"They're the building block of our social order."

He believes the Wal-Mart debate fits in well because, he said, Wal-Marts
force people out of a core downtown area, where smaller, friendlier shops
prevail.
"You can't meet people at a Wal-Mart," he said. "It's about getting in and
getting out."

Ivers and other community members sat outside the Idaho Commons for a few
hours and gathered, he estimates, more than two dozen signatures against the
proposed supercenter two weeks ago. But he wants to do more.
Ivers and community member Tonda Lark are trying to get space inside the
Commons to have a booth with more information on the issue and to get people
to sign the petition.

"I want people to get more involved, because people have a say in the
matter," he said.

There are other issues surrounding the proposed Wal-Mart, Ivers said.
He said the proposed Wal-Mart, which would be 203,819 square feet on more
than 77 acres of land, would be built on ground that is 75 percent
"impervious," meaning no water would be able to penetrate the area.
In simpler terms, Ivers said, asphalt would cover all of that land, which he
said is prime for farming.

Members of NoSuperWal-Mart have decided to fight the proposed supercenter by
turning in a rezoning application for the same parcel. But they want it to
be a bit different.

Ivers said the group has planned to ask for the area, which is the southeast
corner of State Highway 8 and S. Mountain View Road extending to E. Palouse
Drive, to be zoned for residential and light industrial building, so that a
community could be intermixed with some shopping centers.

"That's how communities before World War II were built," he said. "People
saw each other a lot more. They saw their friends and neighbors at the
grocery store all of the time. They knew each other."

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Well . . . I'm off to the Moscow Food Co-Op.  Between them and Wheatberries,
I have always looked forward to Saturday morning munchies.

Take care, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." 

- Emo Philips