WAL-MART SCALES BACK IN CORDOVA, TN

Wal-Mart plans prototype store at Cordova site [Memphis Business Journal (Tenn.)]

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., is proposing to bring its newly branded store design to Cordova, potentially the first location for the mega-retailer’s new Supercenter prototype in Tennessee and one of a handful in the country. A new corporate logo will be featured on the facade of the proposed store at Macon and Houston Levee.

The new site plan for the Wal-Mart Supercenter will be presented to the Shelby County Land Use Control Board July 10. It was withdrawn from consideration earlier this year. The store has drawn opposition from neighbors and concerns from the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development.

Now, Wal-Mart planners have reduced the footprint of the store from 267,000 square feet to 151,908 square feet, according to a June 12 application submitted to the Office of Planning and Development. The 26.53-acre site includes five outparcels in addition to the superstore and 765 parking spaces, down from more than 1,000 proposed in late 2007.

The design of the store is a new prototype for the world’s largest retailer. So far, the prototype has been submitted to a handful of municipalities around the country, and the proposed Cordova store could become one of the first in the nation to don the new “look and feel,” says Dennis Alpert, senior manager of public affairs and government relations for Wal-Mart in Tennessee.

The new logo featured on the store will read “Walmart” written in white letters on an orange background, followed by a white starburst, according to new documents submitted to the OPD by Wal-Mart this week. Documents also show its corporate logo in blue letters followed by an orange starburst. Wal-Mart’s new corporate logo will officially be unveiled next week, Alpert says.

As part of the new store design, Cordova’s proposed supercenter will feature new department titles, less signage, curved lines and earth-tone colors, he says.

“It will be more upscale,” Alpert says. “We’ve moved away from the battleship blue and gray.”

Still a big box—with photo, pharmacy and garden departments—the new prototype will feature green building elements, including energy-efficient lighting systems that turn on when they detect a shopper, more natural light coming through glass windows on the roof, as well as space-saving packaging, he says.

Wal-Mart, which is under contract to buy the commercial-zoned land at the northwest corner of Houston Levee and Macon, favors the site due to residential growth around it.

“The area is under-served by grocers and other retailers, but is growing in rooftops,” Alpert says.

Scott Barton, vice president of retail services at CB Richard Ellis Memphis, says the rapidly growing area is an allure for big-box retailers. Within a three-mile radius of the intersection there are 24,000 people and the average household income is $112,000, one of the highest in the county. And, yes, the upper class shops at Wal-Mart, too.

“Everyone loves the value,” Barton says.

Other retailers see the value of Wal-Mart as well.

“Any time a big retailer builds, other retailers will follow,” he says.

Wal-Mart, which has held meetings with neighborhood groups, said in a letter to the OPD this month that it will improve all four legs of the intersection to include five lanes each, in addition to reducing the footprint of the building and its parking lot. Also, the letter states that the buffer along the western property line will be widened to 92 feet; the building will be repositioned farther from the neighborhood line; more trees will be planted and other landscape improvements will be implemented.

While that appeases some neighbors, others continue to vehemently object to the plan. Architect Carson Looney, principal of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, an area resident and a board member of the Gray’s Creek Association, says a supercenter is an improper use for this land. Looney, who’s involved in Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton’s Sustainable Shelby initiative, says this type of user is “wholly wrong.”

His main argument is that the existing rural roads will not be able to sustain the regional traffic of shoppers driving to and from the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Major road improvements beyond what Wal-Mart suggests will be needed for miles along Macon and Houston Levee, Looney says.

“The county will have to make multimillion-dollar road improvements,” he says. “County taxpayers will wind up paying; you’ll burden the poorest and the richest.”

High traffic around the store will cause residential properties around it to depreciate, Looney estimates.

He says a nearby site at Highway 64 and Paul Barret Parkway is more suitable for a supercenter at this point thanks to improved, widened roads.