Chamber Survey Shows 2 to 1 Businesses Favor a Super Wal-Mart in Atascadero

The Chamber survey recently completed showed 51% of businesses surveyed are in favor of a Super Wal-Mart locating in Atascadero with 23% not in favor. In our last article we did have one fact stated incorrectly we would like to correct, and that is 458 businesses actually answered the question concerning a Super Wal-Mart, not 762. This signifies 21% of the 2,186 businesses in the sample responded to the survey. In reality a 5% response on a sample survey is adequate and we exceeded that by receiving responses from 21% of the business community. When the City of Atascadero surveyed homeowners in early 2000, their sample of the approximately 11,000 households was 400, a good sample.

We received many calls with the question, “I didn’t know there were 2,186 businesses in Atascadero, where are they?” The answer in short is there are probably 700 to 800 viable retail businesses with the remainder comprised of contractors from outside the city that need a city license to do any work in our city, individuals that rent houses, and a myriad of home-based businesses that make up the difference. Granted these are people doing business in Atascadero and were all on our call list. Article Continued...