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It’s official: Walmart is coming to the District. By late 2012, four stores will be in D.C. Walmart’s claim that the stores will generate $10 million a year in tax revenue and create 1,200 permanent jobs is unlikely to warm certain constituents to the company, including the owners of the “mom and pop” shops that Walmart haters frequently herald. The List asked the management at local hardware stores how they were taking the news of Walmart’s pending arrival.

1. Walmart a concern

   “That’s a major blow,” says Marvin, the manager at H&M Hardware, who had not heard of Walmart’s plans for D.C. “Let me digest it.” Says David Maxwell, manager on the bike side of District Hardware/The Bike Shop: “I am personally always concerned about competition. And I don’t care if it’s a 6-year-old outside selling lemonade.”

2. Walmart: “economic vacuum cleaner”

   So says Howard Politzer, owner of Brookland True Value Hardware. “It sucks up all the business. Everybody who sells what they sell, they’re going to sell cheaper.”

3. As long as Walmart’s not in their neighborhood, they’re not worried

   “If it’s not Capitol Hill or very close to Capitol Hill, it wouldn’t affect us,” says John Weintraub, co-owner of Frager’s Hardware. Drew Sutter, who manages Logan Hardware, calls his store “very neighborhood-oriented” and doesn’t think Walmart would be located close enough to lure his customers away.

4. What if Walmart does come to the neighborhood?

   Weintraub says independently owned hardware shops like his would have to emphasize or develop niche businesses, like engine repair or propane exchange. “We cut glass,” he says. “We repair store windows and screens.”

5. Walmart does do some things right

   “There’s benefits,” Politzer acknowledges. “What they will do is they will provide more jobs for the city; they’ll provide more of a tax base for the city.” Says Sutter, “We have a healthy respect for them.” He adds, “We have a very different business model and different practices.”

6. But Walmart doesn’t understand “urban people”

   “The people that own Walmart are middle American, suburban—they don’t live in cities at all,” says David Maxwell. “They deal with suburban people.” Maxwell doesn’t believe that Walmart will find the same “cultural affinity” that it has with its customers among “urban people,” who he says have “different buying patterns, different sensibilities.”

7. Walmart doesn’t offer good advice

   Politzer says people don’t come to a hardware store just to grab an item and leave. “You need advice,” he says. “If you need someone to tell you how to rewire your lamp or paint your wall … I don’t think you’ll find it at Walmart.”

8. Nor do they have an adequate selection of plumbing fittings

   “Some of the products they carry would affect us,” admits Weintraub, but Walmart lacks his store’s depth. “We have lots and lots of nuts and bolts. Fasteners. Thousands of doo-dads. … I don’t know what they’d have in plumbing fittings.”