Mobtown Shank

Baltimore's Mayor Threatens #OccupyBaltimore

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's office is threatening to shut down and/or severly limit the #OccupyBaltimore movement located in McKeldin Park.

Call her office and tell her you want her to side with the citizens of Baltimore and not the banks and big developers and leave #OccupyBaltimore alone: 410.396.3835

Or send the Mayor a message and tell her you support #OccupyBaltimore's right to protest and that hope she does too.

You can also email city council president Jack Young and ask him to support #OccupyBaltimore's right to assemble.

Like #OccupyBaltimore on Facebook.

If you have the time, please turn out at McKeldin Park down in the Inner Harbor and help support #OccupyBaltimore.

Here's Cullen, one of the #Occupy organizers on Countdown With Keith Olbermann talking about the threats Baltimore City has been making.

25th St. Station Claims First Victim - Chestnut AID Pharmacy

The 25th Street Station development in Remington can now claim its first victim.

After serving our community for over 20 years, Chestnut AID Pharmacy's (Chestnut & 36th St.) owner Patrick Burke closed his doors yesterday.

Why did he close? He says one of the reasons is the 25th Street Station's Wal-Mart.

Burke, of Owings Mills, said a combination of too many federal regulations and the impending threat of a new Walmart at 25th Street Station combined to leave him too fatigued to continue operating the store he has owned since May 1991.

“The bottom line is that even if they don’t kill you, they hurt you enough,” Burke said about Walmart.

There may be some Wal-Mart apologists who say this isn't true - but here we have a report of a business owner saying one of the reasons he is closing his business now is because of the coming 25th St. Station Wal-Mart. Period.

So, that is one business and a handful of jobs lost to Wal-Mart.

Source.

Wal-Mart - No Longer The Lowest Prices

What happens when the deep discount shopping you thought you were getting isn't as deep as you thought?

One thing proponents of the proposed 25th Street Station development in Remington have been telling folks is that we need the low-cost, discount shopping opportunities that only a Wal-Mart can bring.

Nevermind the inherent flaws in such reasoning or the well-documented hidden-costs of Wal-Mart's low prices. The simple question is, are Wal-Mart's prices really that low?

Not according to a number of studies that have come out recently.

Customer Growth Partners has found that Wal-Mart is actually more expensive than Target (like the one in Mondawmin less than 5 minutes away from Remington).

And another study by Kantar Retail has found the same results.

"For the first time in four years, our price comparisons between the two has shown that Target has a slight edge over Wal-Mart," said Johnson. ...
...
If you factor in additional discounts offered to Target's Redcard customers, the savings gap widens more considerably between the two discounters.

A third group, McMillan/Doolittle, did their own study and also found similar results. Their study also found that Aldi/Trader Joe's (like the one a number of community members begged be brought into the development instead of the big box retailer) is cheaper than Wal-Mart.

For me, this study busted some myths, most notably that Walmart is always the lowest price. Target has come a long way toward narrowing that gap and has the muscle to back up its recent low price guarantees. And I'll definitely be giving Aldi another try. At those prices, I'd be a fool not too.

So this should put to bed the myth that any community "needs" the big box discount store because of its supposed "low" prices. Studies are showing that Wal-Mart discounts are simply not as good as other options.

Source1.
Source2.

Hampden's Fresh & Green's - 1 Week Later

by Benn Ray

Here we are, one week after the new grocery store, Fresh & Green's, reopened in the defunct Superfresh spot on 41st. St. in Hampden. So I thought I'd post an update on how the store's plan to "expand the selection of prepared meals and natural foods while still providing all the conventional food products and brands you have enjoyed in the past" is coming along. 

This time around, I'll leave the discussion of employees' issues out of it. I've not heard anything new there. I'll just say there were a few familiar faces from Superfresh still working at the Fresh & Green's, and there were a few faces I didn't recognize, so I assume they're new.

The good news is there have been some minor improvements to the store. Fresh & Green's now seems to have a sign (shown above), even if it is just a banner hanging from the front of the store. That's better than no sign at all, I guess.

They also seem to have a logo, but it's only visible on their receipts (even if the receipts don't show the cashier's name like they're supposed to). Note that the spelling of the store name on the receipt is different than the spelling of the store name on the banner. The former is "Fresh & Green" while the latter is "Fresh & Green's". So there's that.

The bad news is that's the only progress viewable from a customer's perspective. Everything else indicates a grocery store still dying.

There is less food on the shelves than a week ago as the Superfresh backstock continues to slowly get depleted and very little seems to get restocked. The only new things I noticed were some prepared salads.

Everything else was pretty much the same only, well, less of it.

More shelves empty. More and more refrigerator units with less and less food.

 
So, if their aim is to provide our neighborhood with more food, they are falling short. And, it would seem, they're falling even shorter as each week passes.

The store is also still not capable of accepting WIC or EBT. And when I was checking out, there was a senior in front of me who was trying to buy groceries with a pre-written check and get the change in cash. That is evidently a Superfresh policy that Fresh & Green's is unwilling to continue.

If Fresh & Green's is serious about being a viable shopping option in Hampden, it needs to start putting food on the shelves soon. It needs to start renovating and making the old Superfresh look like something else. There seem to be plenty of employees there ready to work, if they were only given something to work with.

Fresh & Green's needs to work harder to serve the needs of the whole community. A little food on the shelves, a little repainting, a little rearranging would go a long way.

But right now, Fresh & Green's seems still more like a decaying shell of a grocery store instead of an exciting new hybrid of mainstream/prepared/organic options.

What To Make Of Hampden's Fresh & Green's, So Far - UPDATE

On July 6, Hampden's Superfesh closed for good. The store sat for 3 days while new owners Fresh & Green's moved in, cleaned up, restocked and prepared for yesterday's "grand" reopening.

I wasn't anticipating a lot when I went to check out the store. 72 hours is not much time to turn over that kind of square footage. So my expectations were low.

And the lack of signage, the absence of cars in the parking lot, and a hastily handwritten sign at the front door saying they are still in the process of restocking suggested that low expectations might still be too high.

This is the official welcome from Fresh & Green's, via a small flyer:

Fresh & Green's is delighted to be adding your neighbourhood [Canadian spelling] to our growing family of grocery stores. Our concept is a new and refreshing one that will expand the selection of prepared meals and natural foods while still providing all the conventional food products and brands you have enjoyed in the past. We'll be renovating this location in the near future to provide you with a more enjoyable shopping experience. As an important part of your community and everyday life, we are committed to bringing you an unmatched one-stop food shopping destination. We are passionate about serving you and look forward to bringing your community a unique grocery concept with superior service at affordable prices.

Thank you for your tremendous welcome and on behalf of all of our staff we look forward to serving you.

The two things most folks have been talking about that are mentioned here are this "new" concept of providing natural foods and conventional products and their staff.

So, the store admits it's still restocking and getting its distribution online. The aisles have no signage, and there are spaces on the shelves and whole swaths of nothing - largely where the greeting cards and magazines used to be.

But that being said, I did spot new "natural" product lines - specifically in the produce, juice and hummus areas. The most notable change so far seems to be the chain's own generic/house brand of products - "Best Yet" - which has replaced Superfresh's America's Choice.

We were still able to find everything we found at Superfresh before the going out of business sale and our bill actually seemed to be less than it usually is, even before we used the $10 off purchases of $35 or more coupons they are giving out at the store.

So as far as I'm concerned, while not a new, finished, renovated, fully stocked grocery store, it's functional enough for me to keep shopping there. And I look forward to coming in on a regular basis and checking out the progress.

How fast that progress is has largely to do with staffing, and that's where there seems to be a problem.

I've worked for companies that have acquired other companies and companies that have been acquired by other companies, and staff-wise these things are always difficult. In fact, it's been my experience that staff transitions in a corporate takeover/acquisition most often don't work out.

To be fair, even before the Superfresh bankruptcy was announced, as a shopper, it seemed like employee morale was suffering. Then the bankruptcy announcement added a sense of uncertainty to workers' lives and that made things worse. And then this changeover for some was the final straw.

I spoke for a long time with a store employee who felt relatively comfortable being open and honest about their frustration with the situation.

This employee said that their salary had been cut by several dollars per hour after working at this store for a number of years. They said some employees had their salaries cut as much as $5 per hour. Fortunately, their benefits did roll over.

Of course, when you take over another company and you want to keep employees, the worst thing you can do in the switchover is to cut salaries. So that is a mistake that Fresh & Green's will have to struggle with.

Many Superfresh employees have decided not to continue on with Fresh & Green's despite an arrangement the union made with the new owners to keep on the staff (mostly due to the salary cuts).

Additionally, there has been a change in overtime, as in they're not really being offered overtime pay anymore. The traditional time and a half for overtime/holiday rate has changed to an additional $1 per hour. So, you could spend time with the family, or for an extra $5  you could work a 5 hour shift. And right now, to get this store up and running fully as a reduced, experienced staff, they need to get employees to work a lot of overtime that the owners don't seem willing to pay for. So if this store takes longer to get set up, this is why.

The Canadian CEO and owners flew out to look at the place this past weekend, again according to this employee, and they didn't bother to introduce themselves to the workers or even bother to talk to them. Now this not addressing the "rank and file" (as one of my former bosses would offensively call the employees) could be a cultural thing, but if so that's rude. It's also a missed opportunity for the executives to outline their vision to the employees, to get them on the same page, and to try and motivate them for the work that needs to be done.

Instead you have a situation where you have a demoralized workstaff who have no incentive to work extra hours to get the store up and running, a largely absent corporate infrastructure and supervision, and a lack of employees to actually get the work done.

The employee also told me they were most likely not going to stay on at this store. And they also warned that the prices were going to go up and their feeling was more than likely these new owners would not last.

Of course, that's conjecture coming from an employee so disgruntled they felt comfortable saying all this in the middle of the store with other people around and not at all concerned about any ramifications.

What has happened here so far does not seem to be the ideal scenario for anyone involved. I'm sure the owners would like a smoother transition. The employees would have liked to be kept on at least at their regular salaries. And the neighborhood would like a healthy grocery store that delivers on the promise Fresh & Green's has made - a market with a "selection of prepared meals and natural foods while still providing all the conventional food products and brands you have enjoyed."

Whether or not we'll actually get that last part remains to be seen.

So far, Fresh & Green's self-description as "a unique grocery concept with superior service at affordable prices" is not yet fully realized. And based on the way their corporate executives have handled things so far, it appears as though it's going to be a while before it is.

***UPDATE - I've since heard from former Superfresh employees that benefits have also been cut by the new corporate owners. (7/13/11)

Of Wal-Marts, Developments, And Contractors

Last week, The Mobtown Shank reported that a North Carolina-based painting contractor had announced that it had received a contract to paint a Baltimore, MD Wal-Mart.

Given that there is only one Wal-Mart currently active in Baltimore, and only one "in development" (with the Canton Wal-Mart little more than a rumor at this point) we felt it safe to conclude that this contractor was either referring to the failing Port Covington Wal-Mart or the soon-to-be developed 25th St. Station Wal-Mart.

We also thought it was unlikely Wal-Mart would be investing in a failing location, so we figured the Baltimore, MD Wal-Mart the painting contractor was referring to was most likely Remington's 25th St. Station.

In our haste, we also credited the awarding of the contract to the developer of the project, not the big box retailer itself upon whose participation the project depends, according to sources. From the perspective of most residents, it doesn't matter if it is the devleoper or the big box retailer who is awarding out-of-state contracts. That's a hair for developer Rick Walker and his representatives to split.

After several attempts at calling the paint contractor last week, the Shank was unable to get a live person on the phone. Finally, today the Shank was able to speak to a representative of the contractor who said he could not confirm which Baltimore Wal-Mart his company would be painting.

Regardless of which Wal-Mart it is, this means very little to Baltimoreans who thought a project like the 25th St. Station Wal-Mart/Lowes would mean more jobs than just big box corporate retail employment.

If the developer has awarded contracts to out-of-state businesses, he is violating his promise to communities.

If the Wal-Mart is awarding its own contracts to out-of-state businesses, it reveals exactly the sorts of problems bringing large box, out-of-state, corporate formula retail in to the city causes - no jobs (and it should, in no way, let those responsible for this type of development off the hook).

And if this is actually a contract for the Port Covington Wal-Mart, then this also illustrates how jobs down the line could be sent to out of state business interests instead of city contractors. 

Unfortunately, we fear the difficulty the Shank has had (coupled with the lack of interest mainstream media has had) in this issue means there will be very little contract monitoring and leverage for holding developers accountable for the promise of construction jobs made to the community.

Hampden Elementary & Roots & Branches - Public vs. Charter Schools

by Benn Ray

Edit Barry runs the blog Re:education in Baltimore.

Recently, when the Roots & Branches Public Charter School announced what would later become an aborted effort (due to logistics) to open a charter school 5 blocks away from Hampden Elementary/Middle #055, it provided Barry the opportunity to make an excellent blog post called "Why I Don’t Want a Charter School in My Backyard (Not just yet. Not so fast.)" on the issue of public schools vs. charter schools.

Why should a neighborhood with a critical mass of parental support for revitalizing a neighborhood school support a charter school, when the charter school has the potential to “cream” off the most engaged parents? What would happen to enrollment at Hampden – which is low – if a new charter school opened five blocks away? Charter schools and “traditional” public schools are funded per pupil. Fewer students means less money. What would happen to the budget? Why should homeowners support a local charter school when working to enhance the appeal of the neighborhood school has a greater shot at boosting home prices?

Exactly!

The whole post is highly recommended reading.

Hampden Elementary/Middle School #055 on Facebook.

BDC Reviews Uninspired Inner Harbor Plans At Main Street's Expense

by Benn Ray

Last year (March 2010), the Mobtown Shank reported that the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) - a "quasi-governmental corporation" (whatever that means) - was not only getting an increase in its budget, but it was doing less with its Main Streets Program at the same time. (BDC's unironic Main Street logo, left)

In March 2010, the BDC proposed "graduating" 40% of it's Baltimore city neighborhoods from Main Streets to focus more of its attention and resources on the imploding Inner Harbor - a city tourist attraction and a ridiculously expensive home for large, out-of-state-owned corporate interests like The Cheesecake Factory, Barnes & Noble, Hard Rock Cafe, Best Buy, Filene's Basement, Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, Brooks Brothers, Payless Shoes, Sbarro, Foot Locker, Starbucks, Subway, The Gap, Talbots, T-Mobile, Hooters, Urban Outfitters, and many, many more.

So, what is the BDC thinking about to help save the collapsing, corporate money pit that is the Inner Harbor?

Well, based on the 9 proposals they are now reviewing, they're thinking about installing even more uninspired, unoriginal tourist attractions like:

- a 200-foot tall Baltimore version of London's Eye/Millennium Wheel

- a 13-story Baltimore version of the Eiffel Tower - $2 million dollar Aerophane - floating lighthouse - versions of this attractions already exist in 2 towns in France

- Baltimore's version of Ocean City's boardwalk - observation wheel with rides and activities -  a trampoline, slides, a carousel,  miniature golf, facilities for wall climbing and rappelling

- a Baltimore ski-lift - an aerial tram and a zip line, which would run from Federal Hill to the Baltimore Visitor Center

- Baltimore's version of the back lot of the Cancun Cantina's back lot - beach volleyball courts

- Baltimore's version of a Boardwalk Tram - a trackless train to circulate tourists around the Inner Harbor

Ryan O'Doherty, spokesman for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, said of these proposals, "It says that, even 30 years after Harborplace opened, the Inner Harbor is still the place to be."

Meanwhile, Baltimore city neighborhoods with struggling main streets are looking at the amount of funds city leaders are about to dump into the Inner Harbor to help prop up a tourist mall and fantasizing about how much good even a fraction of it could do for city businesses, residents and neighborhoods.

An Insider's Look At The Borders Bankruptcy

While it's easy to feel a little sorry for the failed corporation that is Borders Books, this interesting inside look by Malnurtured Snay, a Borders employee, at his store's liquidation and the company's attitude and treatment of employees puts things into a more realistic perspective.

Not only does Snay help us not feel sorry for Borders, his documentation of the end of his career reminds us that many, many people are losing their jobs and helps reveal perhaps a bit of how the company got itself in this position and leaves one feeling like it's highly unlikely that Borders will be able to  recover from its largely self-inflicted wounds.

1. Borders threatened to blacklist any employees that quit before they were fired.
"Borders is apparently threatening to blackball all employees at closing stores who end their employment before liquidation is complete."

2. Borders offered no severance package to those employees, despite the coerced employment.
"A lot of folks — good folks, people who’d been with the company for decades — found out they’ll be getting no severance pay."

3. Borders executives blame the low-level sales employees for the companies collapse and not their own corporate stewardship.
"...the company’s newly promoted 'Executive Vice President of Operations' said on a phone conference announcing store closures his belief that bankruptcy was not the result of poor decisions by said upper management, but on lack of effort from sales staff."

Source.

Which Companies Have The Worst Customer Service?

You'd think with high unemployment, customer service at retail corporations would be improving, what with the large pool of workers to choose from. Unfortunately, the economy in recession has exacerbated the situation, creating low morale of employees who are overworked, underpaid and concerned about job security. So the result has been increasingly disappointing customer service.

24/7 Wall Street ranked and rated the companies with the worst customer satisfaction. They are:

9. Newegg.com
8. Barnes & Noble
7. Target
6. Lowes
5. TJ Maxx/Marshalls
4. SuperValu (supermarkets)
3. OfficeMax
2. CVS
1. Priceline.com

More.