Could a smaller Wal-Mart save downtown?
With what seems the absolute reluctance of any business person in Windsor to open a store or business in downtown, could we entice Wal-Mart to the core?
Walmart focuses on smaller format
Walmart is strengthening the management of its small Neighborhood Markets, the supermarket-style stores that represent a potential avenue for future growth as the expansion of its huge Supercenters slows.
The retailer is recruiting a new team of managers and buyers that will focus exclusively on the smaller stores, which, with just more than 150 locations, currently represent only a fraction of Walmart’s total US sales. It is also recruiting managers to develop staff training and store planning and performance systems that will “meet the unique needs of all small formats”.
At around 42,000 sq ft, the Neighborhood Markets are less than a quarter of the size of Walmart’s more than 2,700 Supercenters. The smaller stores were previously served by buyers and merchandisers primary focused on the large stores that are the engine of Walmart’s profits.
As a result, the stores have generally displayed grocery products in largely the same way as the larger hypermarket-style stores, rather than seeking approaches that might be more profitable or more suited to the smaller format.
Because of Wal-Mart’s store locations, I feel that I am missing something of our North American lifestyle and I guess a shopping experience!
Tags: Canadian Tire, Rona, Wal-Mart
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While just about any investment would go a long way to putting the downtown on the road to recovery, the answer to the headline is an emphatic NO.
The problem with this city is that for the longest time the mindset has been for the “one big score”; the saviour, the super anchor, the casino, a canal, the one development that will turn things around.
We have to get away from that kind of thinking and understand that the turn-around of the downtown will only come from an integrated plan involving a number of parties working together. A single entity plopping a store, or what have you, in the downtown will not be catalyst enough to reverse the damage.
So, no, a Wal*Mart will not save the downtown, but it would help.
It’s the entrepreneurs and small local businesses which make a city unique that will save the downtown. Nothing else.
If it’s just like Anytown, Canada, why would people go?
Both of you are right, Wal-Mart won’t resurrect the downtown, nor will it be a one shot, one time “anchor” but if they, Wal-Mart are thinking that the trend to endless sprawling expansion into every suburban town and countryside is about to end, then at least they should be aware that there is a potential to build downtown. That is why I tagged this article with Wal-Mart and Canadian Tire and Rona, hoping that their webbots will find this blog.
I think they along with every other big boxer are feeling the heat of an North American economy that is going down the tubes and that there is a contraction taking place in most areas except in the Windsor area which for all or any reasons still seems to be expanding outwards.
Adriano, a good thought but I doubt it will be in my life time in this city or any time sooner than the end of my life. We have a lot of plans - all sitting on the shelf in the library gathering dust! It’s the mindset of Windsorites et al that we have to change, Windsor seems to live the old UberAmerican dream to the max and without thinking of its consequences, I haven’t really seen any change in that mind set in anything that could be called a movement!
Entrepreneurs and the local small businesses have had over twenty years to come back downtown but yet they still refuse or even acknowledge the problem and situation by their absence.
Maybe Wal-Mart is reading this story: “Is Happiness Still That New Car Smell?” http://tiny.cc/yK03n
FOR generations, American car buying has been guided by one grand philosophy: which one do I want?
But now, another question has begun to percolate: do I need a car at all?
The recession and a growing awareness of the environment are causing many people to reassess their automobile ownership. After more than a century in which an automobile represented the American dream, car enthusiasm may no longer be a part of Americans’ DNA.
At one extreme lies a fledgling car-free movement emerging in big cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco that echoes a much broader campaign in Europe and Asia.
Whether because of cost, convenience or environmental awareness, a small but growing number of people are making individual decisions to get rid of their automobiles and rely on public transportation, car-sharing programs and rental cars.
“There’s a cultural change taking place,” said John Casesa, a veteran auto industry analyst and partner in the Casesa Shapiro Group. “It’s partly because of the severe economic contraction. But younger consumers are viewing an automobile with a jaundiced eye. They don’t view the car the way their parents did, and they don’t have the money that their parents did.”
and to continue; “People are questioning car purchases more than we’ve ever seen in recent history,” said Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends and insights for TrueCar, a company that tracks car-buying habits.
Young, cash-strapped consumers are delaying their first purchases longer, he said, robbing automakers of the chance to attract them early and keep their business as they move up in life.
Across the country, empty nesters are moving back into cities and shedding their cars. Toyota has identified 60 locales where it has seen this occur, according to James E. Lentz, the president of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., and it has begun thinking about whether it needs to open satellite offices to serve customers who’ve moved away from suburban dealerships.
Meanwhile, Mr. Toprak said he was seeing data that suggested car owners who remained in the suburbs were downsizing from three cars or more to one or two. Further, there is a significant move toward smaller vehicles, whether buyers are purchasing S.U.V.’s or cars, he said….”
From the website of The Daily Exchange (Ontario) you might be interested in this article
Will the Upcoming Wave Of Boomer Retirement Sink Canadian Small Businesses?
http://tiny.cc/5szCY
“The next 10 years will see 50 per cent of Boomer small business(1) owners retiring. Despite these numbers, a new BMO Retirement Institute Report predicts several factors will help prevent this retirement wave from punishing the Canadian economy.”
LOS, I see all that you have put down as “one big scores” have actually big pieces of a puzzle to make the necessary changes downtown. Except for the canal, which hasn’t been built yet (if it ever will) not one of those developments (lets throw in holiday Inn, Candarel, Cleary updates, that stupid little mall and the aquarium just for good measure) has ever tried to tackle building or restoring existing neighbourhoods! That has been the biggest folly of all.
Most of the above are good ideas and have added new dimensions to downtown but residential is ignored (except for the canal plan).
I’m waiting for the city to get real and understand that without the residential component downtown will NEVER be a success.
A small Sprawl-Mart dowtnown, while being welcomed by many, I don’t see how it would help downtown in the long term. I want a downtown that has a diversified retail. Not some one dimensional place I can buy crap from anywhere else in the city. Where are the unique boutiques, clothing stores, services etc (ahh yes, they are at Manning and Tecumseh)? Why can’t they be here? You guessed it! Because there isn’t the residential component downtown like there is in Tecumseh.
Dave, My list obviously wasn’t exhustive, but the common thread was that each one (plus those you list) was a stand alone initiative meant to be the be all and end all. As you put it, the key are pieces of a puzzle where each component augments and supports other pieces, is the way to go.
Windsor isn’t big enough to be viewed in exactly the same context as other, larger centres, but the good ideas from elsewhere can be adopted and adapted to fit Windsor’s needs. For example, instead of individual components occupying limited space (like a hotel or condo), think vertically such as in Toronto with the Yonge-Sheppard Centre where commerical occupies the bottom two stories, office space above that, and then residential near the top. And it includes parking, Mark. There aren’t enough residents to support the commercial that’s downtown now. Punters have to be attracted back to the area and that means driving.
But that takes private investment and to attract that requires incentives from a city hall that is motivated to provide them. With the exodus of voters from the downtown, coupled with splitting the area between the newly structured wards, there isn’t enough motivation for politicians to care.
There are plenty of people who live NEAR downtown. We have decent transit access from near-downtown into downtown. We have a waterfront multi-use pathway from near-downtown into downtown. What we need is a decent village downtown.
I agree with LOS that we need to think vertical as well. If we bring in a multi-zoned building (Commerical, Office, Residential) we will have the PEOPLE that make a downtown vibrant. We will have the retail jobs that people are looking for, as well as the shops that I keep wondering where they are. Where is the downtown hardware store? The downtown bike shop? The downtown grocery store? An antique store?
As Mark Bradley said, there are a lot of people questioning whether they need a car. However, in Windsor all the shops are big box stores far from the urban centre, and the downtown doesn’t supply what these car-free people need. People are driving out to these big-box stores for their shopping rather than driving IN to the city.
Are we looking at similar sized metros (Regina, Saskatoon, Victoria, Halifax, Oshawa, St-Catherines) to see what they are doing in their downtown areas that we aren’t?
In regards to those similarly sized metros, some of them are provincial-government towns. But others are not, and all of them ranked higher than Windsor on the list of Canada’s “Next Cities”. As did Sherbrooke, St. Johns and Kitchener.
A residential “component” is essential but to attract - clearly the “right” type of retail as demanded by some, you need disposable income.
Simply filling people downtown will not attract retail save for dollar stores, tattoo parlours, and the like.
You not only need to attract “people” you need to attract “money”.
And to attract money, you need jobs that can support the “boutiques” so desired.
As for “building” neighbourhoods - well, downtown is surrounded by neighbourhoods both vertical and horizontal.
We have around 10,000 people living within a 20 minute walk of downtown and yet an absence of the traditional retail.
Dave asks, where are the unique boutiques, clothing stores, services etc (ahh yes, they are at Manning and Tecumseh)? Why can’t they be here? You guessed it! Because there isn’t the residential component downtown like there is in Tecumseh.
Why can’t they be here?
That’s a good question to start the discussion - because the reasons are far more than simply having a residential component.
I’ll tell you why I moved away from downtown.
I wanted a house with a yard. I wanted peace and quiet. I wanted to putz around in my yard.
The “residential” component required downtown is high-income earners and condo living to attract the retail desired - or any retail for that matter. And that diminishes the pool significantly.
In the absence of this, our downtown, as undesired as it may be to some; has evolved to respond to the needs of the greater majority - tourism, youth and dining out.
I hate that there is no retail to my liking in the core save for Schanfields and the jewlery store and dry cleaners I go to. Clothing stores we have had were too overpriced - so I went elsewhere.
Bottom line, there are no “simple” solution such as A or B that will “revive” downtown. And to achieve the revitalization desire, we need a significant influx of middle to high income earners - which I’ll be blunt, I do not see happenning anytime soon because our economic foundation cannot support that yet.
Chris, I absolutely agree with you.
We do have a lot ofpeoplel downtown but as I have stated many times, it is mostly low-very low income areas that surround downtown.
The question is how do we attract higher income earners and what would make them come to live downtown. Which is why I say where is the investments in neighbourhoods?
If you look at properties downtown many have the same sized yards as those in Walkerville and South Walkerville. The land size is there for putzing around (I do it all the time). The noise is anon-issue for most as most noise is right in the core area. This however might turn off condo purchasers. But the housing component doesn’t get bothered too much by the noise.
We need in infill housing, and mixed use buildings as proposed by LOS and Stephen.
How to go about that? Many houses in the area should be condemned and I mean that nicely. They are in such disrepair I am shocked that the city hasn’t boarded some up already! That might be a start.
Unfortunately, we let some beautiful old buildings that are NOT in disrepair get bulldozed instead. There has to be a balance of history to a city as well. In fact, well preserved history can help with tourism as well.
As Chris says, the resurrection of the downtown won’t happen overnight. I don’t want to keep harping on Toronto, but I know the town. The perfect correlation with Windsor is the Cabbagetown neighbourhood. Once the destination for new Canadians in the 1950’s, and earlier, it fell into disrepair only to be brought back to life when “Young Urban Professionals” started buying the cheap property and both renovating and tearing down and rebuilding. It took a long to bring about the transformation; probably close to a decade starting in the 80’s.
Of course Toronto’s downtown has a lot more to offer than Windsor’s, and was the impetus to draw residents to locate there. Windsor needs to think small, start in pockets and build from there. A large project would be detrimental to Windsor’s needs. The funds for one of the single developments that are being touted (canal and marina, Farhi’s condo, aquarium, or the urban village) could be better spent through rebates, tax holidays, and waiving permits in order to intice investment to the area.
It will take a long time, but it may never happen if we have to wait for approriate initiatives from this mayor and council, or his close friends.
Mark, the idea that wal-mart would move to downtown Windsor is kind of absurd. You have to understand the wal-mart business model. Part of the success of their business model is to transfer “the last mile” distribution costs to the consumer and the municipality. The idea that they would, all of a sudden, internalize these costs is hard to believe.
Yes, consumers and municipalities will start demanding wal-mart internalize these costs, at some point. But we are not there yet.
The question is: How do downtown businesses compete against the distribution advantage of the wal-marts of the world? I would offer two options: 1) Use the superior access to public transit and the walkability of the downtown as a point of differentiation. And/Or 2) Use customer intimacy to customize the product offering to the downtown consumer.
I know it’s absurd Edwin, I don’t and never will think or have thought that a Wal-Mart or anyother big boxer will save downtown, it will just wipe out what we have there now and that isn’t much. But that seems to be the trend for Wal-Mart as was their Lesileville attempt in Toronto last year, which was defeated, even though the OMB gave them the nod over the wants of the city of Toronto.
Nor will just having a Wal-Mart stand-alone store downtown attract the Carriage trade to buy condos or gentrify the surrounding neighbourhoods, that isn’t the top reason they would come downtown but right now, there is still really no reason to move to the core.
Good call Mark. You are correct there really is no reason to move downtown other than a nice waterfront.
In fact it is detrimental to live downtown because the high taxes kill any homeowner (compared to our suburban friends) and the mixed use mill-rate is atrocious as well. If Windsor is looking for mixed-use villages then we are in a world of hurt because those taxes are ridiculous!
Until this city cleans up downtown, makes it a place that is attractive and promotes downtown as a place to live, work and play it will languish as it has for over 20 years! If this city would stop demanding everything be done “their” way and work in conjunction with the DWBIA (as they have with the Downtown Residence Association ie: Farmer’s Market) we could start to move forward. Until then…it just rots.