A Stand Against Wal-Mart and, for Now, a Victory

By Fernanda Santos
New York Times

MONSEY, N.Y. - It was Friday afternoon when the developer who had been intent on building a 215,000-square-foot Wal-Mart in this hamlet sent word to the town offices in Ramapo. The fax was terse, but its message clear: “We will not continue to proceed with the development.”

The news that the developer, and potentially Wal-Mart, had scrapped plans it had so diligently worked on gave observant Jews, who make up the bulk of the population here, reason to rejoice.

They had waged a modest yet unyielding campaign against the proposed store, which they feared would force too many outside influences into their insular world of Orthodox Judaism.

It also represented a political vindication of sorts for Christopher P. St. Lawrence, town supervisor of Ramapo, which encompasses Monsey, in the heart of Rockland County. He hung much of his re-election on a promise to keep the Wal-Mart out of Monsey. During his campaign, he mailed a flier to every home in Monsey, saying, “Supervisor St. Lawrence opposes the Monsey Wal-Mart.” Mr. St. Lawrence was elected to a fourth term in November.

“Wal-Mart doesn’t vote for the supervisor,” said Rabbi Jacob Horowitz, one of Monsey’s most respected religious leaders. “The people vote for the supervisor.

“We work very hard to raise our families the right way,” Rabbi Horowitz said. “And the supervisor understood that preserving our lifestyle is something that’s very important to us.”

There were other issues that Mr. St. Lawrence said had prompted him to stand up against putting a Wal-Mart on Route 59, like the flood of traffic such a big store could bring to a two-lane highway that is already clogged much of the time, and its impact on the revitalized downtown section of Spring Valley, a village northeast of Monsey.

“We’re very pro-business here,” Mr. St. Lawrence said. “But it has to be the right business.”

Wal-Mart says it has not yet formally given up on the project.

Philip H. Serghini, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, said that the company had placed the plan “under review,” weighing the costs of pushing it forward against its potential benefits.

To build here, Wal-Mart would have to overcome at least two obstacles: finding another developer and preparing a new environmental impact study. The town Planning Board rejected the one it received last June on the ground that the proposal to ease traffic on Route 59 with a combination of turning lanes and more traffic lights was inadequate.

Jerrold Bermingham, managing director of the National Realty and Development Corporation, which was to have built the store, did not respond to e-mail messages or phone calls left with him and his lawyer.

With about 28,000 residents and almost 200 synagogues squeezed into 2.2 square miles, Monsey feels at once crowded and neighborly, the type of place that seems immune to the modernity that surrounds it.

Many of the women do not drive, and their children attend the dozens of yeshivas, or private religious schools here. Among the most observant families, home computers are strictly forbidden.

“These are not people who were schooled in the tactics of public protesting, or who even felt comfortable doing it,” said Richard Lipsky, a spokesman for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, a coalition of small-business groups that helped residents here wage their battle against Wal-Mart. “They never imagined they could beat a giant like Wal-Mart.”

The retailer made numerous attempts to woo the Jewish community. Company representatives met with rabbis and agreed to conceal the covers of celebrity magazines featuring photographs of scantly clad movie and television stars to avoid offending Jewish patrons. Wal-Mart also hired a firm to send mailings in Yiddish to local homes, asking residents to suggest ways the company could improve the area.

“A lot of us sent the mailing back to them with the words, ‘No, thanks,’ written at the top,” said a 36-year-old Hasidic man who has lived here for 18 years and who requested anonymity to keep with his religious tradition of modesty.

Then, the community hit back. Residents joined union workers for a rally in December 2006, and circulated petitions and ran ads in Yiddish and English every week for 32 weeks in a local newsletter, Community Connections. The ads warned of the additional traffic the store would attract and how it would expose their children to such unwelcome sights as bikinis and lingerie.

“Very little money was collected or spent” in the effort, said Jacob Guttman, 33, who is Hasidic. “It was just a well-organized and carefully planned grass-roots campaign.”

The rabbis, for their part, encouraged the faithful to speak up. When Wal-Mart offered to repair Monsey’s heavily used sidewalks and build others, the rabbis asked residents to write to local officials, saying they did not need new sidewalks.

“We were determined to make Wal-Mart uncomfortable because by making them uncomfortable, we thought they would eventually leave,” said Rabbi Horowitz, who is also the executive director of a social services agency here, the Community Outreach Center.

“We’re very strong believers that everything comes from the Almighty,” he added. “I think the Almighty realized that for our children to grow up in a beautiful community, for our traditions to be preserved, we couldn’t have a Wal-Mart.”