"It will look different from any of our other stores in Denver or Colorado.”
The design of the proposed Walmart in the 9th-and-Colorado project will be a compromise between the developer’s upscale rendering and newer Walmarts being built in other urban areas, company officials said. “I think it will look somewhere between the developer’s rendering and a store that obviously has our branding and at least a hint of our architectural signature,” said Josh Phair, Walmart’s public-affairs representative in Colorado. “It will look different from any of our other stores in Denver or Colorado.” The proposed store will be similar to urban stores the company is building in Washington, D.C., and Chicago — “stores that look nothing like a suburban Walmart,” Phair said. He added: “It’s really dictated by the design guidelines for the project. In essence, the neighborhood has kind of built the store for us on the exterior.”
Developer Jeff Fuqua’s plan to have a Walmart as the anchor of the $180 million, 28-acre redevelopment project has inflamed neighborhood critics. They say having a Walmart as the anchor of the project — on the old University of Colorado Hospital site — will destroy their middle-class neighborhood; increase crime, traffic and noise; and hurt small, local businesses. They also abhor Walmart’s labor and employment practices. Those sentiments have been expressed at various community meetings, most recently Wednesday night. Fuqua says the project can’t go forward without Walmart, a large sales-tax generator that is the only major retailer to agree to the stringent design standards. The Walmart will have underground parking, with limited surface parking, and will blend in with the rest of the project, with no hint of the big-box look of most of its stores, officials say. “You could probably drive by on Colorado Boulevard and not know that is a retail store,” Fuqua said.
Walmart officials also said they’re still studying whether the store will be a 24-hour operation, pending a security analysis and community feedback, although the company’s “default” position is for round-the-clock hours.
Delia Garcia, media director for Walmart West, told The Denver Post that the store will be a Supercenter, despite its size of 119,000 square feet — modest by Walmart standards. “Supercenter refers to product mix, not size,” she said Thursday. “Everybody thinks it means super-sized, but it doesn’t. What it really means is you can have electronics and apparel and all those departments as well as a grocery. It’s about one-stop shopping convenience. There are some Supercenters that are 100,000 square feet and some that are 230,000 square feet.” Phair said the Supercenter will have sustainable features, including reduced greenhouse-gas emissions, low-flow water fixtures and energy-efficient heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. Not planned are a tire and lube center, garden center, drive-through pharmacy, gun sales or liquor sales, except for 3.2 beer, Phair said.
Re-posted by: Legend Retail Group
www.legendretailgroup.com
@LegendRetail
By John Mossman: 303-954-1479, jmossman@denverpost.com
