Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- In tiny Sandfly, Georgia, on Savannah's edge, residents celebrated when they chased away a Target Super Store planned for their neighborhood.

But within a year after community outcry prompted Target to fold its tent, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. stepped in and snapped up the site for a Supercenter.

``I've heard some people say we should have left well enough alone,'' said Donald Stack, lawyer for two Sandfly churches fighting Wal-Mart.

Stack had just been in Atlanta to try to persuade the Georgia Supreme Court to overturn a Savannah judge and revive the churches' lawsuit to stop the Wal-Mart store. While the churches wait for the court to rule, Wal-Mart doesn't.

Even as about 40 Sandfly residents boarded a rented bus and made the four-hour ride to Atlanta on Monday to watch Stack plead their cause, the Supercenter had already risen from leveled dirt.

``It just seems that Wal-Mart has total disregard for any community they go into,'' says Herbert Kemp, president of the Sandfly Community Betterment Association.

The fear here is that a store that big, open every minute of every day and night, will dwarf the community and transform it.

Sandfly, with its 2,000 residents, many descended from former slaves who began settling here in the 18th Century, is but a speck in the Wal-Mart universe. Still, the protest movement against the invasion of big box stores is growing, joined by those angry at Wal-Mart for other reasons.

Communities Organizing

Hundreds of communities around the country have organized, with towns from Turlock, California, to Peachtree City, Georgia, passing laws to exclude these superstores. There is always a Wal- Mart store opening somewhere, mostly Supercenters that occupy up to 200,000 square feet of retail space. Not counting parking lots.

And beyond neighborhood issues, Wal-Mart has been drawing fire for other practices, including the treatment of its workers and its contribution to the outflow of U.S. jobs to Asia.

``A fair number of people are saying, `I'm not as sure I want to shop there anymore,''' says Patricia Edwards, who helps manage $5.5 billion at Wentworth, Hauser & Violich in Seattle, some of it in Wal-Mart. ``Then they look at their bank statements and say, `I'm not sure I can afford not to.'''

Which aspect of Wal-Mart concerns people most? Edwards laughs at the choices.

Here's one. To protect against employee theft, many Wal-Mart store managers until recently kept the overnight workers locked in, unable to get emergency help quickly for injuries or sickness, the New York Times reported last month.

Working Off the Clock

There have been stories and lawsuits alleging Wal-Mart managers force employees to work off the clock to avoid overtime pay. This sort of thing, along with low wages and benefits, encourages union organizing.

But, as Bloomberg Markets reports in its March issue, there is evidence Wal-Mart has spies to hunt for organizers and retaliate against union-friendly workers. Wal-Mart denies it.

Meanwhile, female Wal-Mart employees are suing in San Francisco, claiming some 1.6 million current and former employees were paid less and denied promotions because of their gender. And last October, federal authorities arrested 245 undocumented aliens working in 61 Wal-Mart stores.

Then there is the matter of squeezing suppliers and contributing to the national trade deficit and the loss of U.S. jobs. As the world's No. 1 retailer bent on constantly lowering prices, Wal-Mart muscles its suppliers to drop their costs, pushing manufacturing jobs out of this country and into low-wage ones. The magazine Fast Company had an extensive story on this in December.

California Grocers

And now come California grocers who lowered pay scales and employee benefits and set off a strike by the United Food and Commercial Workers. Grocers contend they must compete against the threat of Wal-Mart Supercenters, which sell groceries along with the usual goods and are staffed with low-paid workers.

All of this is happening while Wal-Mart frenetically builds mammoth Supercenters, replete with a new wrinkle: When Wal-Mart determines that one of its traditional discount stores is unsuitable for an upgrade, the company simply abandons it to build a larger Supercenter nearby.

Wal-Mart's size, of course, makes it an inviting target. The Bentonville, Arkansas-based company has 1.2 million workers, $256 billion in sales for the 12 months that ended Jan. 31 and almost 3,500 Supercenters, traditional Wal-Marts and Sam's Clubs in the U.S.

Even so, you have to wonder what kind of company this is. Is it necessary to spread so much misery to make investors so much richer?

From Milk to Mattresses

Every third store Wal-Mart tries to build faces community opposition, estimates Al Norman, who runs a consulting business in Massachusetts and a Web site devoted to helping communities challenge the stores. He figures the company wins roughly 65 percent of the time. Still, even when they lose, neighborhoods slow Wal-Mart down, says Norman, whose book ``The Case Against Wal-Mart'' is due out in April.

In Sandfly, not everyone opposes the Supercenter. Susan Hunt, who works behind the smoky bar at Deb's Pub and Grub, says she can't wait to have a place to shop when she gets off work at 2 a.m.

To others, the fact that the Supercenter will be selling everything from milk to mattresses all the time, drawing cars full of shoppers and trucks full of goods, lighting the night over acres and acres of parking lot, is hardly good news.

Its sheer size makes it monstrous next to the modest homes and small-scale commercial strips that characterize Sandfly, which still has an unpaved street here and there.

Not Satisfied

Wal-Mart spokeswomen didn't return telephone calls. The Savannah lawyer defending the company in the Sandfly suit, Harold Yellin, says he can't talk about the larger issues, but said no one has offered evidence the Sandfly churches will be harmed. Besides, Wal-Mart has promised to keep a 100-foot-deep buffer of trees between the store and the road.

This doesn't satisfy the churches or the Sandfly Community Betterment Association.

``Walmart will start a domino effect,'' says association president Kemp. ``And that is going to eventually wipe out the majority of the remaining Sandfly residents.''

A Supercenter, says Norman, ``ruins the unique sense of place of a community and turns it into just one more unit.''

To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Savannah at awoolner@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 13, 2004 10:06 EST