AMERICAN CANYON — Daniel Douville can recite a litany of woes he says mega-retailer Wal-Mart causes within a community, but his own financial reality finds him regularly driving 11 miles from his home in Benicia and filling a shopping cart at the Wal-Mart Supercenter in American Canyon.
Pushing a cart holding two large bags of dog food, a cantaloupe, bananas and other items, Douville said Friday that every trip to Wal-Mart presents a "moral dilemma."
He shops local farmers' markets when he can and supports smaller retailers, but when his monthly bills come due, he has to look for savings.
"I end up coming to Wal-Mart to save a little money," the high school social studies teacher said. "It's a moral dilemma, but I'm also raising two kids. I'm lower middle class. I'm a teacher."
"It's a bummer," he said.
That quandary has played out in the civic halls and streets of Rohnert Park as officials wrestled with an application to allow the world's largest retailer to expand the existing Wal-Mart by 32,000 square feet of grocery space, turning it into a supercenter.
The expansion would be about equivalent to the size of the existing Safeway and Pacfic Market in Rohnert Park.
The Rohnert Park City Council approved the project 4-1 late Thursday. But while Sonoma County's first Wal-Mart Supercenter is still in the planning stages, it's already is a reality near Napa.
"We'll come if they build it," said Beverly Hutcheson of Sonoma, who was shopping Friday with friend Julie Snarr at the American Canyon Wal-Mart.
"To me, the deal is the best thing," Snarr said.
At the Supercenter, Snarr bought a garden tool, cheese, detergent and muffins. She sometimes shops at Lucky's and other stores but said the prices at Wal-Mart keep her coming back.
"We have a Whole Foods, but I can't afford it," she said.
In a limited survey of products sold at the Wal-Mart Supercenter, the Safeway on Commerce Boulevard in Rohnert Park and Pacific Market on Golf Course Drive, Wal-Mart is regularly cheaper.
The cheapest gallon of fat-free milk sold at Wal-Mart goes for $2.26. At Safeway, it's $2.59 and at Pacific Market, it's at $3.39.
For a bunch of bananas, the cost is 46 cents a pound at Wal-Mart, 79 cents at Safeway and 99 cents at Pacific Market.
Broccoli crowns are 88 cents a pound at Wal-Mart, compared to $1.49 at Safeway and $1.39 at Pacific Market.
The proposed Rohnert Park store would be about 20,000 square feet smaller than the 187,000-square-foot behemoth in American Canyon.
The store features a McDonald's, an optical center, nail salon and bank branch. Shoppers can buy swimming pool supplies, sushi, fishing rods, bras, marine oil, beer and wine, paintball guns, specialty cakes and a tiki lamp for $14.47.
One wall features a bank of 44 TV screens. Nearby, flip-flops of every imaginable color sell for $2 a pair. A monitor touting good deals on computers hangs just above refrigerator cases selling Tyson buffalo chicken strips.
Another monitor displays an explainer video for an automatic soap dispensing system sold at the end of the aisle.
Shoppers can buy a poster of teen crooner Justin Bieber for $5, walk a few feet to buy one of a handful of magazines bearing his mug and walk farther still and get his "My World 2.0" CD for $8.
"It's the price that counts," said Gerry Delfin of Vallejo. "Wal-Mart, they have everything."
But Delfin, too, said he struggled with Wal-Mart's sheer dominance.
"It's going to kill local business," he said. "It bothers me, but there is nothing I can do."
Delfin periodically monitors prices at competing stores but said Wal-Mart's low prices keep drawing him back.
"Sometimes Safeway offers buy-one, get-one-free, but it's still cheaper here," he said as he unloaded two carts of groceries into his minivan.
For Douville, the need for a good deal challenges long-held beliefs about fostering local business that he said he developed as an undergrad at Humboldt State University.
He worries the new jobs that Wal-Mart promises will be low-wage with little to no employee benefits.
"It's complex," he said. "The dollar savings value is enough to sway an educated person."
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