Suburban officials like Wal-Mart

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

While Chicago politicians debate the big-box ordinance, suburban officials say they are thrilled to collect Wal-Mart Stores' hefty tax dollars, and they express no qualms about the wages Wal-Mart pays.

Indeed, suburban leaders say Wal-Mart has helped invigorate once-moribund shopping centers because other retailers are eager to open near a Wal-Mart. Two shuttered Montgomery Ward department stores now house thriving big-box retailers as a result of Wal-Mart's entry into north suburban Niles and south suburban Lansing, officials said.

The Austin community on Chicago's West Side is counting on a new Wal-Mart store to help boost its fortunes, too. Wal-Mart has already hired more than 400 of the 500 employees who will work at the store at 4650 W. North Ave., site of a long-abandoned manufacturing plant. The store is scheduled to open Sept. 19.

But Wal-Mart has put off plans to build 20 more stores, most of them SuperCenters that sell groceries, inside Chicago's city limits in the next 10 years until the big-box ordinance's fate is decided.

Some places don't have politicians that are bought off by the union movement.