"Walmart, more than any other retailer in history, has abandoned perfectly usable facilities to build another store down the street or across the road," said Al Norman, a land-use activist in Greenfield, Mass., who created the Sprawl-busters.com blog.
View full sizeWhen Walmart Stores Inc. opens a Supercenter like this one in Springfield, Ill., offering full groceries in addition to clothing, toys and housewares, the retailer often ends up closing another Walmart store nearby, as is happening in Cleveland Heights. Critics say those abandoned stores, whether owned or leased by Walmart, often remain empty for years.Empty Walmarts litter America, and now one might be coming to Cleveland Heights.
Get used to it.
The nation's biggest retailer announced last week that it will close its store at Severance Town Center and open a bigger Supercenter less than a mile away in adjacent South Euclid, at the Oakwood Commons development opening next summer.
The move typifies Walmart Stores Inc.'s move from big-box stores to sprawling Supercenters stuffed with thousands more products. But critics who have studied the switch say the stores the company leaves behind often remain dark for years.
In Streetsboro, Walmart built a 224,000-square-foot store in 2007 that more than doubled the size of its former store about 4,000 feet down the road.
The old building remains empty nearly five years later, even as Walmart reduces the asking price. The 18.3-acre property is now listed at $1.95 million at walmartrealty.com, a company website with 41 former stores for sale.
"Walmart, more than any other retailer in history, has abandoned perfectly usable facilities to build another store down the street or across the road," said Al Norman, a land-use activist in Greenfield, Mass., who has followed the company for two decades. He created the Sprawl-busters.com blog and wrote the book "The Case Against Wal-Mart."
Norman said that after changing its focus to concentrate on Supercenters in the mid-'90s, Walmart has opened more than 1,200 nationwide.
He calls what happened in South Euclid and Cleveland Heights a prime example of "the irresponsible development that can happen when communities don't work together."
Walmart spokesman Daniel Morales said the company does not close stores as much as it moves and expands them in response to consumers' wishes for larger stores with more groceries.
Supercenters, which average more than four times the size of a typical grocery store, sell everything a regular Walmart store does, plus baked goods, deli items, frozen foods, meat, dairy, snacks and produce.
"That store [in Cleveland Heights] might be moving, it's leaving that building, but it's not closing; it's relocating," Morales said. He said that after Walmart leaves, landlords are free to lease the space to other tenants.
Tell that to the communities stuck with empty stores.
"We're seeing this all over the country, where Walmart is abandoning stores that in many cases are not that old and moving down the street or a mile down the road to build a new Supercenter" on vacant land, said Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher at the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis and author of "Big Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses."
Unlike older buildings in most business districts that can accommodate different uses over the years, Walmart's cavernous, windowless buildings "are built to spec for a specific use" that make them hard to adapt to other tenants, she said. "There just aren't many retailers who need more than 100,000 square feet."
Many also remain empty because the company designs its lease agreements to block those most likely to move in -- its big-box competitors, Mitchell said.
Walmart did not respond to questions about its lease agreements.
Jeff Pritchard, Streetsboro's director of planning, zoning and economic development, said the company stipulates that new uses "can't be something that competes with their existing facility," said
"Once you've got a large, empty box like that, it can be very difficult to find a customer willing to move into that facility," he said. "We've had interested parties, but unfortunately, they've always fallen through."
Walmart opened 119 Supercenters in the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31 and plans 130 to 135 this year.
While its regular stores average 108,000 square feet, Supercenters average 185,000 square feet and carry 142,000 items -- about four times as big as a typical grocery store with four times as much merchandise.
The Oakwood Commons Supercenter will stretch over 177,000 square feet, dwarfing the 126,242-square-foot store at Severance.
"Supercenters remain the best vehicle to capture market share, and we remain committed to growing through new Supercenters," Bill Simon, president and chief executive of Walmart U.S., told investors and analysts in February.
Retail expert Robert Antall, managing partner of Consumer Centric Consulting LLC in Shaker Heights, said the strategy makes sense.
"The Supercenters are very profitable for Walmart," he said via email.
"They have taken their efficiencies from mass merchandising and moved it to the food portion of the business, which gives them a competitive advantage over the traditional grocery chains, who, for the most part, lag the industry in terms of technology."
In Copley Township, Walmart wants to build a 283,411-square-foot shopping center with a 24/7 Supercenter and a Sam's Club with a gas station on now-vacant land west of Rothrock Road.
That would cause a 110,000-square-foot Walmart at Rosemont Commons in next-door Fairlawn to go dark.
In 2008, Walmart said it would stay and expand its Fairlawn store. But two years later, the company announced plans for the combination Supercenter-Sam's Club less than two miles away.
Helen Humphrys, president of the Copley Township Board of Trustees, said no one from Copley pursued the company or influenced its decision to move, but now both communities are embroiled in lawsuits over how a 24/7 Supercenter will change neighborhoods and local traffic.
Fairlawn installed concrete barricades on some streets to prevent cut-through traffic from shoppers, which Copley Township is protesting because "school buses, EMS and fire trucks will have to run an obstacle course to get through," Humphrys said.
In Cuyahoga County, residents opposed to the South Euclid Walmart banded together to create "Citizens for Oakwood" and a Facebook fan page: "Help Save 144 Acres of Green Space in South Euclid -- Cleveland Heights."
Another resident started an online petition at change.org labeled: "Walmart: Please Do Not Build a Super Center at Oakwood Commons." It had garnered 679 signatures last week.
"This is a failure of the city governments in Cleveland Heights, South Euclid and University Heights to think regionally and creatively," said Fran Mentch of Citizens for Oakwood. "Clearly they have no understanding of the economic advantages that parks bring."
Norman, of Sprawl-busters.com, said First Interstate Properties' promises to preserve 21 acres of green space by building wetlands and replanting trees and plants "looks like it was written by the Audubon Society.
"It's pathetic how these developers try to make acres of asphalt sound like a 'green' project," he said.
"Where is the regionalism on this? Where are our leaders saying, 'Communities shouldn't be poaching from one another'?" asked Deanna Bremer Fisher, executive director of FutureHeights, a nonprofit that encourages volunteerism and civic engagement in Cleveland Heights and University Heights.
Howard Thompson, Cleveland Heights' economic development director, said both the city and Pine Tree Management Co., which manages Severance Town Center, had "worked very, very hard to try to get Walmart to continue operations at Severance" but never received a proposal to expand or reconfigure that store.
Cleveland Heights Mayor Edward Kelley downplayed the prospect of losing Walmart at Severance, which has for a dozen years been one of the city's largest employers.
"This is an opportunity for the city and the owners of the mall to use the space that Walmart will be vacating and come up with something fresh, new and exciting," he said.
Norman said Cleveland Heights and South Euclid, both of which have signed County Executive Ed FitzGerald's no-poaching pact, should have decided together what would make sense and benefit both cities.
"Both Fairlawn and Cleveland Heights made it really clear to Walmart that 'We'd like you to stay and we'd like to work with you,' and if South Euclid had said 'No' to Walmart," the company might have gone back and expanded its existing store, he said.
That's what happened in Halifax, Mass., he said. When local officials there rejected the company's proposal for a Supercenter, Walmart retrofitted its original store. "When a town turns them down and says, 'It's not wanted,' Wal-Mart goes back to Plan A."
Keith Benjamin, director of community services for South Euclid, said that the city had no role in developer Mitchell Schneider's purchase of Oakwood Country Club and that voters approved the rezoning to allow medium- to big-box stores on that site.
"We can control the architecture and the site plan, but the city can't discriminate between uses, whether it's Walmart, Target, Kohl's or Bed, Bath & Beyond," he said. "We welcome whatever Mitchell Schneider brings to Oakwood as positive for this community."
Local business owners disagree.
Burt Saltzman, chairman of Dave's Markets, which has two stores in Cleveland Heights, said Walmart is what it is.
"You do what you do and you do it better," he said. "They can't be the best at everything."
John Zagara, president of Zagara's Marketplace and Catering in Cleveland Heights, predicts the Supercenter will irreversably change the region's retail landscape.
"A Supercenter will further erode market share, change traffic patterns significantly and change the landscape for east side retail, especially for supermarkets."
"Some of my customers are anti-Walmart," he said. "It will be interesting to see if this keeps them from actually shopping there."
Plain Dealer News Researcher Jo Ellen Corrigan contributed to this story.Follow me on Twitter: @janetcho