Chicago’s only Wal-Mart celebrated its one year anniversary last week. The Tribune reported that the sales tax paid by the big box retailer for the year was more than $1.3 million. Still, want to understand how else the commercial behemoth affected the city and its West Side neighborhood? The Orton Family Foundation has created an online tool to help communities analyze the local impact of a big box retailer.
The tool is for discussion purposes only, but it walks users through an analysis of a fictional big box retailer moving into Anytown, USA to reveal its economic, social and environmental impacts. The evaluator was constructed to be an unbiased instrument to help citizens and local governments uncover the the positive and negative consequences of a new big box neighbor. The Orton Family Foundation is a non-profit organization aimed at using land use planning as a vehicle for creating sustainable communities.
