Walmart looking at town-center features at stores
Big-box retail giant Walmart, long despised by Main Street small businesses for luring their customers to the superstore on the edge of town, is now attempting to bring towncenter amenities to its sprawling parking lots in two Washington state locations and elsewhere.
On a website devoted to its “Town Center” retail concept, Walmart lists four projects underway, including at stores in the Washington cities of Shelton and Tumwater. The others are in Texas and Colorado.
Walmart real estate executive L.B. Johnson unveiled the concept at a shopping-center industry conference in October. “We want to provide community space — areas for the community to dwell,” he said. “We want to provide pedestrian connectivity from our box to the experiential zones that are planned on our footprint.” Community development officials in Shelton and Tumwater said the company has had preliminary meetings with city planners but has not yet taken steps to obtain permits to redevelop the expansive parking lots surrounding its stores. The retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., did not respond to a request for comment.
On its website, Walmart depicts a mix of amenities it may add around its stores, including dining, fitness and sports activities (a golf driving range and skate park are pictured), services, transportation and curated retail — things designed to make Walmart stores into “destinations.”
That’s a big trend for physical retailers looking to give people a reason to actually get out and go somewhere to shop in an era of convenient online shopping and home delivery. Walmart has significantly ramped up its online shopping options to compete with rival Amazon.
Whether Walmart will make good on the Town Center idea in Washington remains to be seen.
Its Shelton store is on the edge of the burg, far from the actual town center. Company representatives met with city staff in late February to discuss a concept similar to what’s depicted on its website — a small parklike area next to a drive-through restaurant at the edge of the parking lot. In Tumwater, Walmart discussed with city officials a small retail pad and dog park.