by Timothy Rutt
Opponents of the planned Walmart Neighborhood Market will meet at 7:30 PM today at Webster's Fine Stationers, 2450 N. Lake Avenue.
One of the major organizers trying to stop the retailer is Shawna Dawson. A former Director of Marketing and Community Manager for Yelp LA, Dawson's Sauce LA firm "consults clients on the virtues of grassroots, social, and viral media." A hard-core foodie, Dawson is also the founder of the LA Street Food Fest (the third annual will be held on July 21 at the Rose Bowl). She also helps organize Artisanal LA, a traveling showcase for local small-scale food producers.
"There's a place for [Walmart], but certainly not in a community like Altadena," she said. "My interest is simply this: that I don't think it's good for the community, its small businesses and small proprietors."
A native Angeleno, Dawson moved from west LA to Altadena 18 months ago, in part because of the active food scene here.
"I've known [Gloria Putnam and Stephen Rudicel, owners of Altadena food scene hub Zane Grey Estate] before we moved into the neighborhood," Dawson said. "You have this kind of amazing independent city vibe where you can have that little laxness with our laws , that you can have goats, you can do urban farming," Dawson said. In her events, she relies on local business owners as much as possible, and "to have all that washed away is kind of depressing."
Dawson said that a Walmart Neighborhood Market moving in to the LIncoln Avenue/Figueroa Drive location would mean smaller, local businesses would shut down. "I think it's a short-sighted move to say 'let's do something on that corner' when we're then going to have 25 corners just like it," Dawson said. "I don't think that no one else wants [the building] -- if you look at yourself as the ghetto, that's what you'll be.
"The first step is to impede the progress of this Walmart and make them move on, but there has to be another piece to that -- what do we do with the building after."
UPDATE: Just clarified that Dawson is the founder of the LA Street Food Fest.
