[arkansasguy06]

WalMart, wants to build a Walmart Neighborhood Market in russellville, and are looking at sites and plans The Courier

walgreens
Robert Elfinger, a spokesperson for Walgreens, said the company has plans to open up a second location on the west side of town. The Courier

and a list of new stores to move into russellville, in the last year or so

tj maxx
chick fil a
shoe carnival
pet smart
pet since
and a few other develments along park-way

if anyone had anything to add about this, please do

[trainedloser]

Neighborhood Market -> YES!!!

Walgreens -> Meh

[Sam I Am]

I'm pretty clueless as to why either of them is needed. My goodness, it's Russellville - it's 10 minutes from one end to the other in 5 o'clock traffic. I understand everything is on the east side of town now...could we keep it there? Like, let that be our business district other than the downtown area? A healthy amount of competition is, of course, desirable - but I'm one of those against the Walmartization of America. My spouse works in Gravette, which is about as remote as you can get. A baby Walmart just opened there - it was needed, but it also closed the doors of a couple of local places. I'm just SO not a fan of expansion to catch a dollar or a Walmart on every corner. Ugh.

Sam Walton is rolling over in his grave anyway...

Walgreen's...whatever....USA drug is right down the street, so is Kroger...meh...

[JohnRuss]

How do you know that Walmart is looking to build a Neighborhood Market in Russellville? There is no record of such interest besides hearsay.

[Sam I Am]

The Courier � Your Messenger for the River Valley - Walmart interested in Vancouver site

Um, yeah - there is ... there's some opposition, but I believe they have bought the property...maybe not...it's been tabled until next month.

[arkansasguy06]

there is prof, i posted a link to the courier story in my first post, if you click the link it will take you to the story. they already looked at the land, and was going to ask for the permits, but tabled it until they could get more info, so they could show the city everything at once, but yes the prof is in my first post.

"Pedestrian Friendly Downtown" Coming to Russellville | River Valley Leader (http://rivervalleyleader.com/content/pedestrian-friendly-downtown-coming-russellville#comment-16298 - broken link) Also here are some of the plans for the russellville downtown modeling, ill post for links about that as they come able, i keep up with alot of news from the area, from all the papers too commercial property for sale, if you update on this post, ill help keep news out there about russellville

as i said, here is all the new info i have for main street russellville, about what they are wanting to do with it, i for one think its a great idea, and think they city should find away to support the plan as a whole, Main Street Russellville main street russellville site, http://www.mainstreetrussellville.co...esentation.pdf the 2nd link is a pdf but takes you right to the plan so far as they have it

The Courier - Your Messenger for the River Valley - Vision for downtown the courier report on what i been talking about for downtown,

[Disgruntled in RSVL]

It appears the city has rejected Walmart's application for the location of a new store. Not surprising. This is the most business-unfriendly place I have ever witnessed. It seems that if you are interested in opening any kind of new business here, all you encounter are ridiculous amounts of red tape, special use permits and "hoops to jump thru", (exact words from city) even when you are surrounded by the same type businesses and are in a commercial area. I don't know why any new business would want to locate here. You would think the city would want to encourage rather than discourage growth, but that is not the case. Be interested if any one else sees a problem here.

[Sam I Am]

The council hasn't made the final decision yet, correct?

I think the most opposition is coming from the fact that this will increase the traffic on Vancouver, which is not set up for that. It's truly a neighborhood. I wouldn't be really too thrilled either. The only good thing that could happen would be if Walmart could fix the drainage problems around there. Ick. I have no doubt Walmart will prevail in this little spat.

I would agree that building permits are handed out rather willy-nilly, but more of the problem seems to be in the zoning of the affected areas. When it's zoned for either commercial or residential, guess which will win? Look at what one church did downtown and south - pulled down a historic home for a parking lot when there was someone wanting to buy it and restore it - and the City Council was leading the parade. You can't replace history, but the movers and shakers got their way. Wasn't even much of a hearing even though there was quite a large contingent of area residents present.

The City Council of R'ville seems to cater to certain names in town, but find me a town where that isn't true - let's be fair. Not saying it's right, just true. All that being said, I'm so sick of seeing the Mom and Pop stores run out of business by the huge megapowers. Pretty soon everything will be big box chain stores. I'd rather see more stores like Leonard's but it looks like the big boys are taking over - R'ville ain't just a wide spot in the road anymore.

[Dariusb]

Is Russelville a fast growing town?

[Sam I Am]

Dariusb, I wouldn't call it fast-growing, I'd call it slowly growing. We have been here in Pope County for 12 years and have seen significant growth, especially with Tech becoming a "real" college. Nuclear One has grown, of course. There are actually better chain restaurants here now where there were very few other than McDonald's and Arby's when we first came. All that being said, there's no major growth from new industry to cause an influx of people into R'ville. It remains primarily a blue collar town.

The population reported by the census in 2000 was about 24,000. The population in 2010 was about 27,000. Although the numbers seem small, that's a 12%+ change for a 12 year period. Of course, that number is for R'ville proper - there are a lot of little outlying towns with people that rely on R'ville for shopping of any sort and employment - the employment market is pretty thin in general.

By the way - Tech's enrollment has increased way over 100% since 1997. The current 2012 figure is right at 11,000 students. Not sure what percentage of those are locals and what percentage migrate in, but I know that housing has been a problem in many previous years. I would think that indicates a large number of students aren't living at home, or that home isn't close...but for 9 months out of the year, as you can see, Russellville's population swells.