WAL-MART SUPERCENTER WELCOMED BY GROWING COMMUNITY.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - When Wal-Mart wanted to open a giant grocery-selling Supercenter in Inglewood, residents voted it down. In Rosemead, the city council's approval of a Supercenter sparked a lawsuit and a recall.

In Palmdale, this week's opening of a Supercenter has drawn only complaints that there isn't a second under way on the city's east side.

Officials and business people in Palmdale and elsewhere see the difference stemming from Palmdale's rapid population growth: A new giant Wal-Mart can fit in without posing an insurmountable threat to existing retailers.

``We're going through so much growth, Wal-Mart can come to town and there's hardly a blip,'' Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford said. ``Wal-Mart can come into a built-out city and create some havoc.''

Covering nearly five acres of floor space, Palmdale's Supercenter is expected to open Wednesday as the first in Los Angeles County, the fifth in California.

Besides groceries and traditional Wal-Mart merchandise, it will contain a McDonald's restaurant, a nail salon, a hair salon, an optometrist, a photo portrait studio, an oil-change and tire shop and a drive-up pharmacy.

A prototype design for future Supercenters, the store is the biggest for a single retailer in Palmdale.

Wal-Mart started building Supercenters that sold a full line of groceries as well as general merchandise in 1988. It now has more than 1,800 nationwide.

The first in California opened last year in La Quinta, a small fast-growing city with million-dollar homes and gated golf course communities in the Coachella Valley, south of Palm Springs.

The Supercenter joined Target, Steinmart, Lowe's and Home Depot stores along Highway 111 in the 36,000-resident city.

``We have not lost any businesses because of Wal-Mart,'' La Quinta Mayor Don Adolph said.

Many of the Wal-Mart shoppers are driving in from neighboring communities, Adolph said. He's checked at La Quinta's Vons, Ralphs and Stater Bros. markets and was told their businesses have continued to grow as fast as the city's population, despite the Supercenter.

Since the Supercenter opened, Trader Joe's has started construction, Wal-Mart's Sam's Club warehouse store is nearly ready to open and competitor Costco is getting ready to build a store, Adolph says.

``They participate in the city,'' the mayor said of Wal-Mart. ``They donate to charitable organizations. They're part of our infrastructure. They've very good neighbors to have in our city.''

The reaction was diametrically different in Los Angeles County cities such as Inglewood, where Wal-Mart's Supercenter plan was first blocked by the City Council and then by voters, who voted nearly 61 to 39 percent in 2004 against a referendum to permit the store.

In Rosemead, citizens have battled for 2 1/2 years to stop Wal-Mart from building a Supercenter on former Southern California Edison property at the city's southern end.

``It's near homes and a school. It would take traffic off inadequate streets and onto resident streets,'' said Larry Bevington, a former city manager of nearby Sierra Madre and El Monte who lives in a condominium complex adjoining the proposed Supercenter.

After Rosemead's council approved a development agreement, opponents collected enough signatures to force a referendum election. Rather than call the election the City Council agreed to revoke the agreement. That didn't stop the store, however, and opponents filed a lawsuit calling the environmental impact study inadequate.

Two incumbents were defeated in the March election, and Wal-Mart opponents are collecting signatures to recall Mayor Jay Imperial and Councilman Gary Taylor, who weren't up for election in March.

The recall campaign is as much about police protection and other city issues as Wal-Mart, Bevington added.

Wal-Mart's union critics and others criticize the chain for its wages and bring up a lawsuit accusing the chain of discriminating against women workers in pay and promotions.

Bevington said the Rosemead opponents are motivated by the location and what the store would do to Rosemead, not the other issues.

``That's somebody else's fight,'' Bevington said.

In Palmdale, the fight against Wal-Mart went to citizens five years earlier, and Wal-Mart won handily. A campaign backed by supermarket unions collected enough signatures for a citizen vote on a zoning change that permitted enlarging an eastside shopping center where a Wal-Mart was planned.

Wal-Mart opponents characterized the vote on Measure T as one to keep out a Supercenter that would ruin markets and other stores, replacing good paying jobs with lower-paying ones.

Palmdale citizens voted more than 65 percent to 35 percent to allow the zoning change. The east Palmdale Wal-Mart opened in 2002, but remains a conventional store, not a Supercenter.

The Supercenter in west Palmdale will replace a smaller 14-year-old conventional Wal-Mart a mile away.

Built on vacant land at the north end of the city's fast-growing 10th Street West corridor of shopping centers, the Palmdale Supercenter has drawn no opposition - except for unsolved nighttime vandalism in June.

Someone used spray paint to write ``capital kills'' and other slogans on the unfinished walls.

``I think the vote on Measure T let people know where we stand here,'' the Palmdale mayor said of the lack of opposition.

Isaac Barcelona, executive director of the Palmdale Chamber of Commerce, said he hears no negative remarks from local business people to the store. Wal-Mart is an active member of the chamber, and one of the chamber board members is the new Supercenter's manager, Mike Blackmon, who is managing the west Palmdale Wal-Mart that will close, Barcelona said.

``I hear nothing but good things,'' Barcelona said. ``They feel it's part of the progress and growth of the city. It's kind of a status symbol to have a super Wal-Mart.''

Wal-Mart workers stocking shelves at the new store earlier this month said they enjoy working there.

Worker Lisa Turley transferred to the new store from a Wal-Mart in a small town in Missouri to get to back to Southern California, where she grew up.

``I love working here,'' she said.

Charles F. Bostwick, [phone]

chuck.bostwick(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- ran in AV edition only) Mike Blackmon, manager of the new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Palmdale, is managing the west Palmdale Wal-Mart that will close. He is active in the Palmdale Chamber of Commerce.

(2 -- ran AV and SAC editions only) An employee stocks shelves at the new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Palmdale. The store faced scant opposition from the community, in contrast to conflicts elsewhere in the Southland.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer