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Wal-Mart Supercenter to anchor planned Turf Paradise Marketplace
Mike Padgett
The Business Journal
June 29, 2005
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A Wal-Mart Supercenter will head the
lineup of several new businesses that soon will be among the attractions
next to Turf Paradise in northwest Phoenix.
The new development, named Turf
Paradise Marketplace, is planned on 70 acres next to the track.
"A Wal-Mart Supercenter will be coming
in, and a Sam's Club and Checker Auto, those will be the first three
built," said track owner Jeremy Simms.
Simms said a major commercial
development has been proposed on the unused property northwest of the
track since 2000, when he bought the race track on a total of more than
300 acres southeast of Bell Road and 19th Avenue.
Both Wal-Mart and Sam's Club are
expected to open by late summer 2006. Wal-Mart spokesman Jack Bisio said
construction is planned to start later this summer. He said an existing
Wal-Mart at 330 W. Bell Road will be closed for relocation to the new
Supercenter at Turf Paradise Marketplace.
The Supercenter will have about
200,000 square feet and employ from 350 to 500 workers. Sam's Club will
have 135,000 square feet and about 200 employees, Bisio said.
Wal-Mart currently has nine
Supercenters in the Valley -- two in Phoenix, two in Glendale, two in
Mesa, and one each in Scottsdale, Surprise and Apache Junction. The
company also has 11 regular Wal-Marts throughout metro Phoenix.
Existing businesses on the south side
of Bell Road, including a renovated McDonald's at the southeast corner
of 19th Avenue and Bell, will be integrated into the new development.
Simms said the design includes a new
four-lane road that will offer access to the track and the new stores.
The road will meander eastward from 19th Avenue toward the track and
then veer north on the existing street from Bell Road.
The race track will remain open during
construction, said Paul Gilbert, Simms' attorney.
The buildings' exteriors will be
similar to retail designs seen in North Scottsdale, such as Gainey Ranch
Villages at Scottsdale and Doubletree Ranch roads.
The signage for Turf Paradise
Marketplace will include a depiction of a miniature racetrack with three
metal jockeys.
On the east side of the Bell Road
entrance to the track is a smaller parcel where Simms said he has plans
for a selection of restaurants and small retailers. He said he has
rejected an earlier idea for office buildings as part of his total
redevelopment proposal.
© 2005 American City Business Journals
Inc.
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Vancouver council turns
down Wal-Mart
Canadian Press
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
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Vancouver — The "green" Wal-Mart
designed especially for Vancouver was turned down overwhelmingly by
Vancouver city council on Tuesday after developers spent four years
working on it and opponents spent just as long battling against it.
Only Mayor Larry Campbell and his two
political opponents from the Non-Partisan Association supported the
big-box store proposal for a former car dealership site on the city's
Southeast Marine Drive.
In a rare display of unity on a
controversial issue, both factions of the centre-left Coalition of
Progressive Electors voted together in opposing the project.
Everyone also voted the same way in
voting down a giant Canadian Tire store planned for a site nearby.
The surprise decision made people like
Louise Seto, a southeast Vancouver resident who led a campaign against
both big-box stores, ecstatic.
"I think they really validated the
whole vision of the city. They put the teeth behind the words," she
said.
But those who had worked on the
Wal-Mart and Canadian Tire applications were dismayed by the decision
that many had believed would be much closer than the 8-3 split that
emerged Tuesday.
Architect Peter Busby, a renowned
sustainability advocate who designed a Wal-Mart concept with windmills
on the roof, natural light, and significant energy efficiency, said he
was tremendously disappointed.
"Vancouver lost an important
opportunity. It became political. It wasn't about the design. It wasn't
about the land use."
Wal-Mart's local development
consultant, Darren Kwiatkowski of First-Pro Shopping, described himself
as "flabbergasted and stunned" that council rejected it after the
proposal had been supported by both staff and the city's urban design
panel.
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Wal-Mart acquires Carolina Circle Mall without incentives
The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area
June 29, 2005
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Without economic incentives, Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. is buying the former Carolina Circle Mall in eastern
Greensboro and will convert it into a giant retail store next year.
Greensboro businessman Don Linder, who
owns almost all of the property and arranged the deal, confirmed that
Wal-Mart is buying the 78-acre site off N.C. 29 for $3.3 million and
will have its contractors start construction of a new
206,000-square-foot "supercenter" store in January. That store should
take about eight months to be ready and should open in fall 2006, Linder
said.
Linder has spent the last three years
buying up parcels of the vacant 78-acre site with the hopes of selling
it to a larger industrial company. Wal-Mart was willing, but only if the
location was ready by November.
In June, Linder asked the Greensboro
City Council for $300,000 in economic incentives to help get the site
ready and built for Wal-Mart. But amid public opposition by those
against tax incentives and eastern Greensboro neighborhood groups that
supported the Wal-Mart proposal, Linder withdrew his request two weeks
ago.
Wakefield Associates demolition crews
have already cleared out the out-parcel stores around the mall and this
week have been removing walls inside the 600,000-square-foot mall. At
this pace, the demolition will be completed by fall and the site can be
graded by December in order to meet Wal-Mart's deadline, Linder said.
"A project like this is very
difficult," Linder said. "There are hundreds of issues that we've
addressed from many groups, and we're still moving forward."
Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) anticipates
60,000 shoppers a week at the new store.
© 2005 American City Business Journals
Inc.
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Upscale Tastes Invade Wal-Mart's Hometown Migration of High-Priced
Executives Transforms Arkansas County
By Michael Barbaro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 27, 2005
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BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart's
folksy, baseball cap-wearing founder, Sam Walton, so despised public
displays of wealth that, after his death in 1992, the billionaire's
heirs decided to enshrine his prized possession, a battered Ford pickup,
behind a simple storefront on the town square here.
But Walton's spirit of restraint is
harder to find next door to the museum at Fusion, a new fine-arts
gallery that sells $2,500 abstract paintings and $1,200 urns. Or at the
nearby Landers Hummer dealership, crowded with $62,000 sport-utility
trucks. Or inside Shadow Valley, a gated community where four-bedroom
houses fetch $1 million.
The hard-nosed retailing tactics of
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have transformed communities across the country,
but none more so than the one in its own back yard. Benton County, once
a sedate backwater, is quickly morphing into a swanky oasis in the
middle of the Ozarks.
Wal-Mart's unchallenged dominance in
American retailing--it now sells about 30 percent of many household
consumables--has persuaded scores of suppliers to open satellite offices
around its headquarters to ensure their products remain on the chain's
coveted shelves.
The result is an unprecedented
migration of high-paid executives to the northwest corner of Arkansas --
professionals from amenity-rich cities like New York, San Francisco,
Atlanta and Miami, who bring not only their six-figure salaries, but an
appetite for Jaguars, sushi, pet day-care centers, Gucci shoes and
Chanel sunglasses.
Every week or so a new retailer,
restaurant or spa sprouts up amid the cow patches here to satisfy their
every need and, seemingly overnight, a county synonymous with a purveyor
of cheap socks, dolls and televisions is earning a reputation for
something altogether different: luxurious living.
Until recently, being dispatched to a
supplier's Wal-Mart office was a dreaded assignment -- two years of
eating at a nearby Applebee's and shopping at, well, Wal-Mart. "Nobody
wanted to do it," said Ron Johnson, who runs the Wal-Mart office for
Walt Disney Co.'s consumer products division. "That's not a problem
anymore. So much has changed."
Wal-Mart has produced a fair share of
millionaires, but Walton's rigid code of humility -- even top executives
stay at a Holiday Inn when traveling on the company dime -- remains
deeply ingrained in the company's culture, discouraging conspicuous
consumption.
Wal-Mart's suppliers, however, honor
no such vow of modesty.
In Rogers, just north of Bentonville,
nattily dressed executives from Kellogg Co. and Colgate-Palmolive Co.
sip lattes and lunch on cold Thai salmon at the Market, a gourmet
grocery store that offers sushi-making lessons. Up the street, at
Murphy's Jewelry, the latest Versace fashion show flickers on a
flat-panel television and $100,000 necklaces glimmer from behind a glass
case.
Jeff Collins, an economist the
University of Arkansas's Sam Walton School of Business, said the
thousands of suppliers who have moved to the region are "trying to
recreate the world they knew back home, wherever that was, and they have
the money to do it."
From 1990 to 2000, Benton County's
population jumped 57 percent, to 153,406 from 97,499, while the average
household income rose to $40,281 from $26,021, according to census data.
Wal-Mart is not the only company
cranking out wealth in northwest Arkansas. J.B. Hunt Transport Inc., the
trucking company, and Tyson Foods Inc., both major employers, are based
here. But neither has the global reach or supplier network of Wal-Mart.
"Around here, Wal-Mart is the catalyst," said Bill W. Schwyhart, a
partner at Pinnacle Group, which is developing a $200 million upscale
shopping center near Wal-Mart's headquarters.
And by Wal-Mart, Schwyhart means its
vendors.
In nondescript office parks that have
cropped up across the region, the biggest names in consumer
goods--Procter & Gamble, Gillette Co., Nestle and PepsiCo Inc.--are
packed in cheek-by-jowl with tiny manufacturers such as Dolly Inc., a
children's clothing firm, and cigar-maker Swisher International Inc.
No one knows the exact number of
suppliers who have opened shop near Wal-Mart, but local officials put
the number at 2,000, and predict the figure could eventually double.
The phenomenon began in 1989 after
Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart's largest supplier, opened a 10-person office
in Fayetteville, Bentonville's neighbor to the south. Today, P&G's
Wal-Mart staff has ballooned to 200.
There are now 20 office parks
dedicated to Wal-Mart vend | 
