Walmart seeks urban locations for new stores

300-400 planned

Jon Boyd, Sep 30, 10.

Walmart has announced a new business strategy, with the goal of opening 300-400 urban stores across the country, says a story posted at Planetizen. The company says these stores would feature groceries and be designed to compete with chains like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, according to the American Banking and Market News.

Dwindling opportunities for new stores in suburban areas leave Walmart searching for new markets, according to Kaid Benfield:

What really seems to be happening is that the retailer has already saturated the suburban/exurban market – especially given that those sprawling places are not experiencing the same population gains that they once were, and it sees the city as a new and growing opportunity. Madison Riley, managing director of the retail consulting firm Kurt Salmon Associates, told O’Donnell that “Urban is just the next frontier. There are only so many places they can grow.”
O’Donnell’s article reports that plans for the urban expansion will be unveiled next month at a meeting with analysts at Walmart’s Arkansas headquarters, and that “the new 20,000-square-foot stores would likely combine the Marketside and Neighborhood Markets formats.” It must be noted, though, that both of the two existing smaller-store formats have so far been placed primarily in suburban, automobile-dependent locations (see photos just above), not highly walkable, urban ones. It remains to be seen how adaptable they are to environments that readers of this blog would consider “urban.”

But for the moment let’s take Walmart at its word that these will be urban stores. If so the upshot will be that advocates asked the company to consider more urban-friendly formats and, by coincidence, that is what cities may soon be getting. But cities will be getting them not because Walmart’s commitment to sustainability is leading them to move away from unsustainable sprawl but largely because it has nearly exhausted current market opportunities in sprawl.

Photo by Six Steps