A few months ago I reported that Wal Mart may be coming to Encinitas (Hide the Women and Children and one of the first North County Business News sections). Well it's been reported this week that Patrick Murphy, the city's planning and building director, has confirmed Wal Mart has a building permit for the old Home Expo space. The location is where Pei Wei, Islands, REI, and ARCO all share a parking lot. The original problem was that for X amount of retail space, the city required X amount of parking spots. The Home Expo building is roughly 104,000 square feet and the city said there wasn't enough parking for a Wal Mart type store (not sure how the city figured the parking was enough for Home Expo but not for Wal Mart). Anyway, Wal Mart was adamant about moving into the space so they worked on their numbers and told the city council that they'd only occupy 96,000 square feet of the space- which means they'd wall off 8,000 square feet and leave it empty. Now that's dedication. All that's left before remodeling was a city council meeting last night to discuss the interior layout- which won't delay anything. Of course putting in a store almost 100,000 square feet in size will take some time and it is assumed it won't be open until late winter 2011/2012 or spring 2012. It will be interesting to see what the store looks like- most Wal Marts are around 120,000 square feet in size- and it's super centers are 185,000 square feet- the Encinitas location will be 96,000 square feet- 1/2 of a super center. Also, what will it mean to local competing businesses across the street like Best Buy and Target?
I also find it odd that the locations of the current north county Wal Marts form a semi circle around Encinitas. Seems as though a lot of towns in the area didn't want Wal Marts either. So where do we go from here? Let's take a look at the pros and cons of Wal Mart moving in to Encinitas:
Pros:
-We're in a recession so the low prices will help our wallets.
-Increased tax revenue for the city.
-Lots of people in the area are out of work so the new jobs are welcome.
-There's a lot of vacant retail space in Encinitas that needs to be filled.
Cons:
-Increased traffic.
-Tough on local businesses to compete with Wal Mart's low prices.
-Decrease in property values. Seriously- we couldn't fill the space with something more upscale like a movie theatre, Nordstrom Rack, or Cost Plus?
-The people who shop at Wal Mart! Don't believe me? Check out the site People of Wal Mart. There's something about these stores that just brings out the worst of people.
