As the Delta Optimist points out this place may have the biggest impact on the “commercial store activity” in Ladner and Tsawwassen-superstore Walmart opens in Tsawwassen Commons today. If the mega mall (which as locals have found, is profoundly empty except on the weekend) was not enough, the Walmart as part of the 550,000 square feet of “local” retailing of Tsawwassen Commons aimed directly at folks within a seven minute drive may be the coup de grace for Ladner and Tsawwassen businesses.
This Walmart is 150,000 square feet where the manager states “It’s going to offer a one-stop shop, so you can pick up your groceries that you would normally pick up once a week, but you can also pick up your socks or underwear or TV. It’s going to have everything. It’s built from scratch. It’s a bright store with the full LED lighting and it’s also a very well designed store, designed to make it very easy for the shopper.”
One quarter of this new building will be devoted to groceries, with the remaining area dedicated to a garden area, clothing, electronics, cosmetics and housewares.
By offering many products and low prices, Walmart seeks to have a spatial monopoly, taking the bulk of trade away from local businesses. A study done by the Simon Business School showed that a Walmart supercenter typically impacts retailing within a three-mile radius but not beyond that.
As the study notes: “Walmart’s entry does not negatively affect revenue or employment at grocery stores more than three miles away from the Walmart site. This seems to indicate that Walmart’s strategy of exploiting density economics by convincing consumers to travel farther for goods has not translated from dry goods to groceries.” Consumers with discerning tastes won’t be frequenting a Walmart grocery and “it may be difficult to gather a sufficient mass of grocery shoppers under a single roof to generate the requisite scale.”
So while many folks may travel a lot of kilometers to buy a computer, they may not want to do that with groceries in the post-motordom era. It remains to be seen whether local residents will forsake their local retailers and main streets in Ladner and Tsawwassen for the lure of a Walmart. This, like the huge crowds at the Tsawwassen Mills mega mall, may be a brief fascination.
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Tell us about your great new walmart?
–Well, it’s bright so you can see.
LOL
I can’t ever recall visiting a Walmart. It won’t be hard to maintain this record.
Interesting how we have such ambivalence about Walmart, but much more fervently embrace Amazon, which is a much bigger local jobs killer– no 3-mile radius issues!
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Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.
One should keep in mind that the only ways into or out of Tsawwassen are adjacent to the new malls. A high percentage of residents pass by the malls every day and stopping off to buy something won’t require going out of their way.
Having said that Tsawwassen isn’t a very populous place and I imagine it takes a lot of customers to keep a Walmart in the black.
The malls are definitely an out-of-the-way trip for residents of Ladner and every other part of Metro Vancouver which is why so much effort has been expended on marketing Tsawwassen Mills as a destination. Once the novelty wears off I think Mills will be in trouble. When the next “destination” opens it’s almost guaranteed to be in a more central location and that should relegate the Tsawwassen malls to near ghost town status.
When we lived on the east side and I worked long hours there were no grocery stores nearby. Buying anything meant a bus ride with toddlers or a trip in the car. In those days we liked the one stop convenience of the local Walmart and visited every month.
We now live in a walkable community and go to Walmart maybe twice a year, mostly for children’s clothing and footwear. I don’t think I’ve placed more than 8 orders from Amazon in my lifetime. Most products can be sourced elsewhere and I try to support local businesses when practical.