No Mart, Bart!

The closing of Walmart at Severance and opening of Walmart at Oakwood brings back memories. Back in the day (the 1980s, I believe), the developer Bart Wolstein wanted to buy Oakwood and put Cleveland's first Walmart there.

The neighborhood—the whole city—was, expectedly, up in arms and formed a Stop Walmart group headed by a Heights High teacher, Allan Wolf.

I, who had run for the Cleveland Heights school board, joined the fray as an ad consultant. The first thing I did was to design a bumper sticker that read "NO MART, BART!"

The campaign worked and Walmart was turned down, not to rear its ugly head until many years later.