Dominck's Finer Foods, a Chicago area grocery store chain, is part of the Safeway conglomerate. Safeway, which had gross profits of 9.5 billion dollars last year, wants to build a new Dominick's store in my home town, Buffalo Grove, but wants more than a third of a million dollars of the construction cost to be paid for by tax dollars. I have urged village officials to just say, "No," to this request for corporate welfare.
Supporters
bring you Rob Sherman Advocacy.
Click here to join them.
Jewel, part of the Albertson's conglomerate, and Dominck's are the two leading grocery store chains in the Chicago area. Dominck's has 118 stores in the metropolitan area, including three in the Village of Buffalo Grove.
One of the three Dominick's stores in Buffalo Grove is in what is now a beat-up old building that used to be a Kohl's Food store. Kohl's Food is now part of A&P. It is not, however, part of the Kohl's Department Store chain. Kohl's Food sold the building to Dominick's many years ago when it left the Chicago market. Safeway wants to replace that store with a modern, new one across the street, which is good. The problem is that this highly profitable company wants to reduce the cost to themselves of building their private facility by having Buffalo Grove tax dollars pay a substantial part of the construction costs.
At issue is the requirement that property owners provide a place for the detention of rain water that falls on their property, rather than sending it though storm sewers to the nearest river. The rain water used to be soaked up by the ground, but covering the ground with buildings and paved parking lots means that rain which would have been soaked up by the ground is instead drained off into storm sewers, from which it flows into the nearest river. All that extra water run-off has resulted in severe flooding in towns along the rivers, because the rivers can't handle all the extra water that results from paving over the ground throughout the metropolitan area. In order to protect river towns from any additional flooding, laws have been passed which require that property owners store storm water on site until the storm is over, and then slowly release the water after the rivers have gone down so that the rivers can handle the additional water without flooding the towns along the river.
The cost of building a storm water detention basin is a cost of doing business in the Chicago area. The cost of the basin at the site of the new Dominick's store is about $350,000. Dominick's will make substantially increased profits at a newly built store that is much more modern and double the size of the old store, but instead of paying for the basin, themselves, out of their increased profits, Dominick's is asking the taxpayers of Buffalo Grove to pay for Dominick's private storm water detention basin so that Safeway can give all of the money from their increased profits to their stockholders instead of using some of the increased profit to pay for the cost of generating that increased profit.
On Monday night, I went to the meeting of the Buffalo Grove Board of Trustees to ask that the Village reject the proposed ordinance that would have Buffalo Grove taxpayers eating the cost of this private improvement, rather than having Safeway stockholders pay for it out of their increased profits. After I made my presentation, the Board of Trustees voted to defer consideration of the ordinance until it could be further reviewed as to its merits.
I will be having breakfast with Village President Elliott Hartstein this Saturday, March 10th, at 7:30 AM at the Buffalo Restaurant, Lake-Cook and Arlington Heights Roads, to press the issue further. You are welcome to join us there and let Elliott know whether you think that Dominick's needs a donation of your tax dollars to pay for its private facilities, or whether you think that Dominick's should pay for their stuff, themselves, out of their profits.
As usual, if I'm the only one to object, the Village Board will say that Rob Sherman is the only one who cares, so let's donate tax dollars to Safeway's stockholders. If, however, enough of you show up and express outrage at the proposition, the idea will die.
Dominick's is going to build the new store there, anyway. Their assertion that the project is not economically viable without a donation of 350,000 tax dollars is just posturing, just a corporate bluff. There is far too much money to be made by building that new store to allow this cost to get in their way. If Dominick's doesn't build that store, would they want Jewel to come in and build there and take away all their business? Of course, not.
The Daily Herald and the Pioneer Press have run stories in today's papers about my efforts to stop this taxpayer giveaway and corporate welfare at the expense of working people. Here is the Daily Herald story, entitled Buffalo Grove debates sharing with Dominick's, and a back-up link in case the original link expires before you see this edition of Liberal News. Here is the Pioneer Press story, entitled Board nixes grocery plan and a back-up link. That story has an incorrect title. Dominick's was also proposing to add a gas station in front of the store. The Buffalo Grove Village Board nixed the plans for the gas station part of the Dominick's plan, but did not nix plans for grocery store.
I'll let you know what the village does when they make a decision on the proposed ordinance.
Rob Sherman P. O. Box
7410
Buffalo Grove, IL 60089-7410
A post office box is used
because
the street address uses a curb mail box,
which is not secure.
Telephone: (847) 870-0700
Fax: (847) 870-1156
E-mail: rob followed by the at symbol followed by robsherman dot com