Proposed Wal-mart in McKinney: "neighborhood market" (Plano, Orange: lawyers, buying)

[tyanger]

$3.8 million dog park - not even considering tax revenue, jobs, and other economic impact. Wow.

[orangecat1]

Originally Posted by MurphyPl1

OrangeCat,

Why on earth would a dog get run over because there's a shared drive? Surely that dog park requires leashes to and from the enclosed area?

Second, as a taxpayer, I'd be LIVID if my tax dollars (be it sales or property) were used for that purpose. $3.8M to buy off a developer is incredibly poor fiscal management of my tax dollars.

Third, as much as people say they can't stand WM or NWM, they are packed. And businesses LOVE to be by them. When our NWM (very popular) closed when they opened the WM across the street, they had several stores vying to purchase the NWM building. Because it's high traffic.

Because dogs get away from owners. Then you have the very probable distraction of a dog owner and a small child running after the dog, etc. and now you also have a possibility of a child being injured as well.

No, you would not be livid if $3.8 million were used to buy off a developer, because in McKinney our governments spend as much money as they possibly can. We have the highest school tax rate in the entire STATE. Our city government has done some incredibly high spending stuff, such as paying off corrupt city leaders who "retire". After the latest retirement of a police chief, we have the latest example. At the same city council meeting the council hired a temporary police chief, and are paying him $75 per hour, AND if he wants to work on the side, he can!

They hired a retired person. Does anybody think this guy is actually going to "work" 40 hours per week. He is not a 50ish looking man. He looks to be in his mid-60s at least.

I agree the actual walmart will be packed, that is why the shared drive will be a mess.

So, we will see. The only other precedent I know of is that in south McKinney the new walmart came in and the strip center in the same parking lot as walmart took forever to fill in with businesses. I"m talking at least a year after walmart, the center finally filled in.

[BCB]

I can't stand Wal-Mart. Back in the days when Sam was alive, my mother even worked there while paying her way through the last two years of university. Nowadays, Wal-Mart has turned into a hugely greedy company that has millions of blind followers (their customers.)

[Rock Climber]

Originally Posted by ETex2

I love Walmart's "neighborhood market". Small stores, easy and quick to shop and get out, great prices, etc.. They built one in Rockwall maybe 10 or 12 years ago in an upscale neighborhood. Neighbors were up in arms! They claimed the area would deteriorate quickly and it would be a blight. Just the opposite has happened - the snooty women who turned up their noses at a dreaded "Walmart" coming into their beloved neighborhood are now their best customers.

I agree. I think Neighborhood Markets are great. They are certainly better than Supercenters, just for convenience and cleanliness. They tend to have really good produce and great prices around here. I get told that I am biased toward Walmart (which I rarely shop at) due to proximity to their home offices. It is alleged that they keep their stores here nicer than in other parts of the country. I am not sure if that's true.

[Wrecked]

This is solely on McKinney not the developers or Walmart. The landowner, developers and Walmart have a property right. Which is why nothing can be done. The city cannot require them to do XYZ above and beyond either. The landowner/developer/walmart have rightfully told the city to go pound sand as their development meets all legal requirements. At this point its for the city to put up $$$ to fix their bungled planning or shut up.

[orangecat1]

I talked to a city council man yesterday and told him how I felt. I gave him my fearless forecast, which is that a dog or a child will be hurt because of their shared entrance plan. I told him how I came up with my plan to pay the developer for the land, and he tried to say it couldn't be done, etc. I called him on his b.s. and told him every man has his price and he backtracked. I told him something he already knew, which was that when someone gets hurt, because a walmart driver runs over a dog or into a child, they will sue the city and walmart, etc. He acted like he was totally helpless that this thing is over. I guess it is. I also predicted that the strip center will NOT sell out quickly, because of the controversy.

btw, he disputed the $3.8 million figure I read somewhere. I can't remember where I read that so maybe it is not true.

I even caught him on the last walmart we had built here in McKinney. That walmart shared a parking lot with a strip center, and that strip center did not sell out right away. The strip center took at least 6 to 8 months to fill up, and they don't seem to do a whole lot of business. He told me that enough citizens complained about that walmart that they did something to make it less desirable for the small businesses.

I'm starting to think that walmart has problems just about everywhere they go these days. Does anybody want them anymore?

One council member will not face re-election, because of term limits. Maybe we should throw all of them out, and start over?

[ETex2]

My question for the OP - would you be just as opposed to a trendy store such as Whole Foods or Sprouts moving into that location next to the dog park? What type of business would be suitable there?

[orangecat1]

I am totally 100% opposed to ANY business sharing a driveway with a dog park!!!!!!!!!!

I think it is pretty obvious that the danger is there. For those of you who haven't been to a dog park, it is quite stressful the first time you go to a dog park. The dogs are excited, you're excited about going to a new place, etc. There is a strong chance you will accidentally let go of the leash because you have so many things going on. This did happen to me, and I was lucky. My dogs didn't panic and came straight to me. Almost all dogs will behave correctly.

The monkey wrench occurs when you add a small child to the mix. Then add in the fact of the shared driveway with a walmart shopper running late to buy his/groceries and bam!

Now, the second issue, and the reason I am especially ticked at walmart is their hidden agenda. The "experts" have stated that whenever walmart thinks they will have opposition, they "sneak in" by coming in with their neighborhood market. Then a few short years later walmart comes back in, demolishes the little walmart and builds a huge supercenter.

The "proof" is in the part of the plan where an attached building is allowed. imo, the city did not have to allow this, but they did.

I just thought of something important. My theory that the strip center will not be successful right away could prove to be beneficial to people like me, because if the center does indeed have problems, that might make walmart think twice about coming back to demolish the neighborhood market. Maybe walmart will decide that people in that part of town are not that enamored with walmart as to demand a 24 hour supercenter???????

[Big G]

IMO, I think you need to spend less time listening to "experts".

You've worked yourself (and maybe some others) up into a frenzy based on speculation and extrapolation. Recall that you yourself said that a Neighborhood Market would be OK, right? So the whole panic here is over the possibility of Wal-Mart expanding their presence into a Supercenter, based on a red herring "attached building". (Which I'm going to guess is there to allow suppliers to drop off deliveries at times when accessing the main store would be difficult.)

Does that really, REALLY, seem rational? It certainly doesn't to me. If Wal-Mart wanted to build a Supercenter there, they'd just be building a Supercenter right now. They wouldn't need to "sneak in" with some super-double-secret plan of first building a Neighborhood Market, then flushing multiple millions down the toilet by bulldozing that and replacing it with a Supercenter.

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As for the strip mall not immediately being 100% leased - that's business as usual for a strip mall. If you look around at a typical strip mall, only SOME of the stores are large chains. Quite a few are one-off small businesses, or local businesses with a handful of locations. These type of operations can't afford to lease "a pig in a poke" - one bad location will sink them. They have to wait until the strip mall has established a solid footing, so they can know more precisely what traffic to expect and what lease terms to negotiate for.

Keep in mind that, when a storefront sits empty, there are no winners. The landlord doesn't make rent income, the city doesn't collect sales tax, employees aren't hired and paid, and the consumers miss out on a potential offering. Your delight and glee in that are, to be honest, rather off-putting.

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I'm not even going to touch the "dead dog lawsuit" extrapolation - it would just be excessive piling on.

[globe9]

Agree with everything Big G said. You really need to calm down and stop worrying about What if's. A dog being run over is not the forgone conclusion that you seem to think it is. Also, any dog park I've ever been to prohibits small children from entering, so they shouldn't be there anyway. Regardless, this seems like a done deal so there isn't a whole lot you can do about it now. I'd focus your energies elsewhere. Maybe you could start a petition or something to get another dog park built in another area of McKinney. Nothing wrong with having more than one dog park in a town.