Word: garner
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...summer afternoon in Chicago, Margaret Garner, CEO of the Chicago construction firm Broadway Consolidated, took a ride to Chicago's poverty-stressed 37th Ward. Dressed immaculately in a multicolored blouse, black pants and red steel-toe work boots, she had an appointment with a field of dirt and dreams. Garner surveyed the 11-acre site, where an old factory had recently been demolished, and proclaimed the future: "This will be Wal-Mart No. 5,402. But I can guarantee you, it won't be anything like Wal-Mart...
...Garner is the first black woman ever hired by Wal-Mart to build a store. In the summer of 2003, when Wal-Mart began looking at Chicago's West Side, the company went searching for contractors to build stores in the city. Wal-Mart was looking for someone who could lay down a solid foundation, both on site and in the surrounding West Side community of Austin, where high unemployment and high retail prices prevail and the labor supply, while plentiful, has a few dents in it. "The community aspect is not something Wal-Mart has typically had to deal...
...Mart decided to rely on Garner's local knowledge, contracting Broadway Consolidated first to demolish the old factory and then to build the 150,000-sq.-ft. superstore that will employ as many as 300 people. Garner says that the work will produce between 150 and 200 construction jobs, half of which will go to minorities. Half of those minorities will be African Americans, including black men who often have the hardest time finding jobs: ex-cons. In a city whose building trades are dogged by allegations of racism and in which the unemployment rate for black...
...math is simple: Wal-Mart offers stores and jobs to poor black communities that are hemorrhaging both. Meanwhile, those communities extol the virtues of Wal-Mart, offering a buffer against the company's critics. Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott is well aware of what a business partner like Garner does for the company's profile. "I like the image," he says. "In one part of Chicago you have ... an African-American woman who demolished the existing building ... and her team, which is largely minority business subcontractors, is going to be building a new store...
...Jessica Biel, known as the âwild childâ Mary Camden in TVâs âSeventh Heaven,â and, oh yeah, for her topless pictorial in Gear magazine. But youâre probably not going to garner too many big names for your summer blockbuster when your pitch goes: âItâs like âTop Gunâ married âThe Terminatorâ/âI, Robotâ/every other man vs. machine movie made, and they...