Over the weekend I espied the deconstruction site you see here, across from Bachman Lake at Northwest Highway and Marsh. The new Sam's right there took me by surprise -- so too did the disappearance of the landmark Whirly Ball, which I knew was coming ... but, still. It's never easy to lose an old friend. Anyway. The site, where Al's Pizzeria used to slice it up, is being prepped for that Walmart, one of many coming to a neighborhood near you. And this one's right next to a Target too.
Still not sure if Lower Greenville's getting one -- Mitchell Rasansky last said to bug him come Friday, so we'll wait for that. (Though I have recently heard rumors of a restaurant taking the space ...) But I did see that last week, Walmart execs explained in Supermarket News why it's taking over Dallas.
Bill Simon, president and chief executive officer for U.S. stores, said the company plans to open new stores in areas in which it already has medium to high market-shares, including Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Baton Rouge and Dallas-Fort Worth.Read the whole thing here.
"The choice is to cannibalize ourselves or get eaten up by someone else, and we've determined we need to build a competitive number of stores in some of our strong markets to retain our share," Simon said.
As an example he cited the Dallas-Fort Worth market, "[where] we had a great market share, but when we slowed growth to avoid self-cannibalization, the competition grew by 300 openings."
The company said its capital spending budget in each of the next two years will be $13 billion to $14 billion, compared with $12.7 billion in fiscal 2011.
