Mississippians push politely for a better Wal-Mart

During the Mississippi Renewal Forum, retail specialist Robert Gibbs, architect Victor Dover, urban designer Laura Hall, and CNU President John Norquist all tried to persuade Wal-Mart to make the retailer’s next store in Pass Christian, Mississippi, fit into a traditional Main Street format. As New Urban News went to press, a group that included new urbanist designers had received an invitation to fly to the chain’s Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters to discuss the proposals with Wal-Mart executives. What brought about the encouraging turn of events was a combination of quiet persuasion, public meetings, and insistence from the press. A store manager and a planning and engineering consultant for Wal-Mart attended part of the Forum in Biloxi, where new urbanists attempted in a low-key but persistent manner to win them over. Gibbs, from Birmingham, Michigan, argued, in diplomatic tones, that the company could find advantages in building a two-floor store as a replacement for a single-story, 190,000 sq. ft. Supercenter that Hurricane Katrina destroyed in Pass Christian. “You could grade it in such a way that supermarket customers go right into the supermarket” while other customers go in a separate level containing such things as automotive supplies, Gibbs said. Do customers buy groceries and motor oil at the same time, Gibbs asked. He was evidently hoping the answer would be “No” — allowing him to then explain how a two-floor arrangement would be well suited to two distinct shopping purposes. But Shane Guin, an engineer with the Duplantis Design Group in Thibodaux, Louisiana, which plans Wal-Mart stores in Louisiana and Mississippi, thwarted that line of thinking. In the South, Guin said, it is in fact common for a woman to buy groceries while her husband gathers other kinds of products, such as motor oil. The two-level concept was not going over well. But the Forum participants counted it encouraging that Guin and a Wal-Mart store manager, Chris Ortstadt, were there at all, listening and responding to new urbanist ideas. Although Guin looked uncomfortable, his face flushed throughout the discussion, Dover gently persisted. “We’re imagining a scenario where we have less real estate than in the past,” Dover said, suggesting that after Katrina there may be fewer cheap, large-acreage sites available for construction. It might be good to place parking beneath the building or on the roof rather than have a huge parking lot, Dover said. “Land prices are going up.” Apartments above? “One of the things that we’re looking for is to pull more value out of a site … use less land or add another profit center,” Dover continued. The added profit center could be housing above a series of Main Street-style shops that would flank a Wal-Mart entrance. “That would be tough,” Guin replied. When Dover said the 30 or 40 apartments above the shops could be rented to Wal-Mart employees, saving them time otherwise spent commuting, Guin recognized some merit in the idea. “Wal-Mart is trying to find some temporary housing; they’re having a hard time doing that,” he acknowledged. But he quickly added, “Wal-Mart loves their parking. I don’t know if they would cut into their parking.” Guin also theorized that the chain could find itself more vulnerable to lawsuits — perhaps from the apartment tenants — or other pitfalls if the world’s largest retailer started combining housing with a store. Wal-Mart, as a large company, looks “like it has a target on its back,” Guin said. Norquist suggested that the future Wal-Mart, which would replace a structurally damaged store on US Route 49, would fare just fine even if there were smaller stores, such as Foot Locker, along part of its exterior wall, facing the sidewalk. “It’s not a competitive problem,” Norquist said. “Touching other buildings is good; then you really are part of the urban fabric.” If the project were done right, he pointed out, Wal-Mart, which is regularly criticized in the press, could score a public relations bonanza. Since the Forum, Wal-Mart has remained a much talked about issue on the Gulf Coast. Ricky Mathews, publisher of the Biloxi Sun Herald, editorialized Nov. 6 in favor of a Main Street kind of format, saying the retailer “could devise a model that would silence the critics who say that Wal-Mart is all about killing small towns. What if,” Mathews asked, “Wal-Mart were to work with new urbanists and [Andres] Duany to develop a new town center for Pass Christian that could become the catalyst for the rebuilding of the city? Instead of a ‘big box’ store, Wal-Mart could build a series of stores that give the appearance of a small town.” That center, dubbed a “Wal-Mart village,” would be outside of Pass Christian’s old downtown. In the Chicago Tribune, architecture critic Blair Kamin called a charrette proposal for a “Wal-Mart village,” with seemingly old-fashioned Main Street buildings affixed to the exterior of a giant discount store, “pure Disney fakery.” In an email exchange with New Urban News, Kamin observed, “Wal-Marts are big; the new urbs are trying to make them small and human-scaled, part of a townscape. That’s worked in some two-story Targets I’ve seen here in Chicago, but the Pass Christian drawings just seem like Main Street use — pure stage set.” Kamin said he would rather see an architect like Rem Koolhaas, “who accepts bigness rather than trying to hide it, take a crack at this one. We might get more integrity in the architecture.” The Wal-Mart that was destroyed was a big sales tax generator, responsible for one-sixth of the tax revenue of the 6,579-person municipality. Pass Christian lost about 70 percent of its buildings in the hurricane and desperately wants the retailer to return. Other ideas raised by a planning team headed by Hall, of Santa Rosa, California, included placing Wal-Mart in the historic downtown. Some people feared traffic would overwhelm the small downtown, and there were questions about whether the available land in the downtown would be enough to satisfy the company. Invitation to Bentonville After a Nov. 7 town meeting, Hall said the company has asked a group to go to Bentonville Jan. 16 to discuss the issue. “We got a very warm reception to these ideas,” Hall said of the Wal-Mart response. One of the chief possibilities the group is pursuing is a two-story building with Wal-Mart on the ground floor, other businesses above, and a façade reflecting the style of the community. A mixed commercial and residential area with affordable housing and narrow, walkable streets could be built around it, Hall said. Gibbs cautioned that if the new Wal-Mart is not in the old downtown, the downtown must achieve an extremely high quality level, becoming a destination for superior shops, food, and restaurants. Otherwise, it may not be able to compete. The Route 49 Wal-Mart had, by local accounts, put about three or four stores out of business. They may, however, have been on the verge of failing even before Wal-Mart arrived about two years ago. u