Menards Moving Facilities Out of State

From the JS (for which I can't get a permalink)...

Eau Claire - Home improvement retailer Menards has decided to build manufacturing and distribution centers in Iowa and Ohio, resolving a longtime wetlands dispute with the state Department of Natural Resources, a newspaper reported. Eau Claire-based Menard Inc. had wanted to build in the Eau Claire area, but the DNR wanted to preserve two small wetlands on the Town of Union site near Menards' headquarters. "We spent more than three years of frustration and over $1 million of our money trying to build this project here in Eau Claire and never received permission to do so," Menards spokesman Jeff Abbott told the Leader-Telegram in Eau Claire. "We are obviously frustrated and disappointed." Menards portrayed the DNR's steps as regulatory roadblocks. DNR officials said they were protecting the environment and didn't treat Menards differently than any other entity seeking to fill a wetland. In February of 2005, Menards announced that two expansions involving 185 jobs would go elsewhere because it couldn't get DNR approval for the proposed building near Eau Claire. Menards reported it added 100 workers to its truss plant in Plano, Ill., and 85 others to the store fixture manufacturing plant it opened in a former Menards store in Belgrade, Minn. The company says Eau Claire lost out on another 600 to 800 jobs that will by divided among distribution centers under construction in Shelby, Iowa, and Holiday City, Ohio.

I'm sure there were plenty of behind the scenes politics here, but if Menards wanted to build their new plants in Eau Claire they could have found other space. If they're actually committed to the people of Wisconsin like they seem to tout, why didn't they make this work? Why didn't they build it somewhere else in Eau Claire? I've been to Eau Claire, they have plenty of space up there. John Menard has been a longtime anti-environmentalist/cheapskate from everything I see.

That history includes a 1997 plea agreement in which Menard and founder John R. Menard Jr. agreed to pay $1.7 million in penalties on charges that they violated state hazardous waste laws. The case included allegations that John Menard, a billionaire and one of Wisconsin's richest people, used his own pickup truck to haul bags of chromium-contaminated incinerator ash produced by the company and dump it into his trash at home.

Documents showed at least 13 instances in which the DNR issued notices of non-compliance or notices of violation against the company for air, water and hazardous waste regulations.

"No other corporation or individual has had so many contacts with the DNR concerning environmental enforcement," Justice Department lawyers said in the court documents.

As one of the largest private firms in Wisconsin, with an estimated $5.5 billion in 2003 sales, Menard is the only company the DNR has referred twice for criminal violations of state pollution laws in the past seven years, lawyers for the Justice Department said. More.

Good for the DNR to stand up to John Menard.

I don't shop at Menards, do you? Why? They don't appear to love the environment of this state, nor do they truly want to provide jobs for the people of this state.

I'm going to Home Depot.