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New Haven To Get Wal-Mart
Retailer will open on Foxon Blvd. next summer
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Business New Haven
11/10/2003
By: M.C.B.
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The world's largest retailer is coming soon to an Elm City near you.
New Haven will at last have its very own Wal-Mart store when the store opens its doors in the summer of 2004.
The national retail chain plans on renovating the old K mart building on Foxon Boulevard, Exit 8 off I-91.
The 154,000-square-foot Wal-Mart will be a standard store, not a Wal-Mart Supercenter, so it will not include a grocery section. But it will house a garden center, pharmacy and optical center, company officials said.
Wal-Mart acquired the property in April 2003 in a nationwide deal that included a combined bid by Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Target to purchase a large portion of K mart's real estate after the company filed for bankruptcy.
Home Depot was not interested in the property because there is already a Lowe's store just a quarter-mile to the west.
In published reports Mia Masten, the Wal-Mart community affairs manager for the Eastern Region, said the deal was a "win-win" situation because it involves a renovation rather than a construction and the general customer base already exists in New Haven. She said the company routinely evaluates existing stores to make sure they are operating at peak efficiency, but not at such a rate that overcrowding and long lines become a problem, as has been the case at other area Wal-Mart stores.
Not all New Haveners are overjoyed.
Douglas Rae, a Yale School of Management professor who specializes in cities and economic planning, told the Yale Daily News that despite the fact that Wal-Mart offers a number of low-wage jobs and competitive prices, it tends to devastate small retail in cities. He said while the store is not dramatically different from its predecessor, K mart, the placement of a Wal-Mart in New Haven is, on the whole, a bad idea.
"Small business is vital to the city," Rae told the student paper, "and Wal-Mart is a toxin."
As the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart employs 1.3 million people worldwide and accounted for $244.5 billion in sales in the fiscal year ending January 31, of this year.
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