The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Walmart to close its store in Shoreline Plaza
GUILFORD — Walmart announced Tuesday the retail chain will close its Shoreline Plaza location at 900 Boston Post Road next month.
A regional spokeswoman for Arkansas-based Walmart said the store will closed on May 20. All of the 98 Walmart employees who work in the Guilford store will be eligible for transfer to other stores, the spokeswoman said.
Even with the Guilford store closing, Walmart still employs hundreds of people in six Walmart stores in the immediate area. The closest locations to Guilford are in Branford, Old Saybrook and New Haven.
There are 33 Walmart stores and one Sam's Club warehouse club location in Connecticut. Walmart owns Sam's Club, which is named after Walmart founder Sam Walton.
Prior to Tuesday's announcement, the most recent Connecticut Walmart closing occurred in Derby in July 2016. Sam's Club closed stores in Orange and Manchester in January 2018.
Guilford First Selectman Matt Hoey said he first heard of the Walmart closing from State Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford.
“Obviously, we're disappointed,” Hoey said. “The Walmart was an asset to the entire community — the place to conveniently shop, affordably shop for a variety of things that may not necessarily be available in elsewhere
in town. I'm in there at least once a week myself so I'll have to revise some of my shopping habits.”
He said the next step for town officials is to meet with the management of Shoreline Plaza about options to fill the vacant space in the shopping center. Brooks Properties of Branford is listed in town records as the landlord for
Shoreline Plaza.
Walmart's departure from Shoreline Plaza will leave 84,100 square feet of space to fill, a spokeswoman said. The store opened in October 2002, according to Walmart officials.
“Hopefully, we'll wind up with another retailer in there at some point,” Hoey said. “We'll be happy to work with the management company to find a suitable tenant or replacement tenant.”
A variety of factors could have prompted Walmart's decision, according to David Cadden, a professor emeritus at Quinnipiac University's School of Business.
“Even with an increase in the minimum wage, they might be finding it difficult to get people to work there,” he said.
The size of the Guilford Walmart could also have had an impact on the comopany's decision to close the store, Cadden said. The size of the Guilford location is less than half of the size of the average Walmart, which is 180,000 square feet, he said.
Shoreline communities between New Haven and the Connecticut River have a dearth of discount retailers. Neither Target,
Costco nor BJs Warehouse Club has any stores in that part of the state. The dearth of discounters in those well-heeled Shoreline communities may be a reflection of the area's demographics, Cadden said.
“The perception for those stores, particularly Walmart, is that they are for the lower middle class or for the working class,” he said.
On the other side of the price spectrum, Whole Foods also does not have any locations in those towns — pehaps because of the relatively low density of the population.
The decision to close the Guilford store could be a recognition by Walmart officials that their initial market analysis regarding how many of its stores the shoreline can support may no longer hold true, according to Cadden.
“Because of the level of success they have achieved as a company, it may have been difficult for them to admit they had made a mistake,” he said.