Wal-Mart Drags Its Feet

Wal-Mart presses on with Snohomish County plans [HeraldNet (Washington)]

The world’s largest retailer is moving along with its plans for more Snohomish County outlets.

Wal-Mart was poised two years ago to saturate Snohomish County with at least four new stores between Arlington and Mill Creek. Rumors flew about additional locations in the area.

Today, the retailer’s added just one store, while two approved sites sit empty and another is tied up in the appeals process.

Wal-Mart’s still coming to more corners of the county, the retailer says, but it’s taking more time than planned.

“It has been a longer process,” said Jennifer Holder, Wal-Mart’s local spokeswoman. “But we haven’t changed any of our plans in Snohomish County.”

She added construction on the 204,000-square-foot supercenter along 172nd Street NE in Arlington is likely to begin before 2008 comes.

Work on the Marysville supercenter-sized store is scheduled to start next year. The retailer is working out right-of-way details at that location, said Doug Buell, spokesman for the city of Marysville.

Wal-Mart would have liked to be further along in its local expansion by now, Holder acknowledged. Three of the four Snohomish County stores it’s proposed have faced organized opposition.

In Arlington and Marysville, union-supported neighborhood groups gave up their battles within the past year. The fight’s still on in Mill Creek, however.

Wal-Mart has hoped to build a store on an undeveloped field along 132nd Street SE for at least four years. After gaining initial approval from Snohomish County planning authorities to build there, a hearing examiner last fall ordered Wal-Mart to study the potential environmental and traffic effects of building the store. Such a study wasn’t required for the project’s initial environmental approval.

Such a study will take considerable time, both Wal-Mart and its opponents agree.

“They’re back on the county’s timetable now,” said Lillian Kaufer of Citizens for a Better Mill Creek. That group hopes to gather more opposition to the store in the meantime.

Snohomish County - like most of the metropolitan area around Seattle - hasn’t seen the same full-scale push by Wal-Mart as other areas of the nation. The county didn’t see its first Wal-Mart until late 1999. The first supercenter opened in 2004, when Wal-Mart expanded its Quil Ceda Village store.

With the opening of a store in south Everett last year, the retailer has three stores in the county. Before opposition to those stores emerged, however, it looked like Wal-Mart might have twice as many stores open locally by now.

In the intervening couple years, Wal-Mart’s overall sales have grown at a slower rate than some of its competitors, and the company has weathered a raft of controversies. Last fall, the world’s largest retailer said it would slow its expansion.

But Holder said that’s not affecting expansion plans in Western Washington, where Wal-Mart sees plenty of growth opportunity. Despite the slowed pace of store openings here, the retailer is interested in growing more locally, especially in south and east Snohomish County, Holder said.

Dick Outcalt of Outcalt & Johnson Retail Strategists in Seattle said he doesn’t doubt Wal-Mart’s commitment to grow in this region.

“Their expansion continues, their appetite continues,” Outcalt said. “They’re going to continue to come into this area.”