WAL-MART TO BRING GROCERY STORE TO STONE PORT
Posted: December 18, 2014
By VIC BRADSHAW
HARRISONBURG — Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will continue to expand its presence in the area as it is working to bring its standalone grocery-store concept to the Stone Port mixed-use development.
Company spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg confirmed via email Wednesday that a Walmart Neighborhood Market is in the works for the development southeast of Harrisonburg near Sentara RMH Medical Center. No opening date has been determined.
“We are excited to bring our Neighborhood Market store to the Harrisonburg area and provide our customers there the benefits of a Walmart closer to where they live and work,” Henneberg wrote. “Grocery is an area that customers have come to expect from Walmart because they know we can offer a broad assortment of fresh food at a low price.”
Representatives of Frontier Development LLC, a Miami company developing part of the 105-acre property, have filed site plans with the Rockingham County Department of Community Development. The plans show a 41,402-square-foot grocery building with a drive-thru pharmacy and parking for about 285 vehicles.
The store will be located near the southeast corner of the intersection of Port Republic and Stone Spring roads.
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart, which operates more than 11,150 stores in 27 countries and e-commerce stores in 11 countries, posted revenues of more than $473 million in its last fiscal year, according to its latest earnings release. The company employs more than 2 million people.
While best known for its supercenter stores, which sell groceries along with myriad other items ranging from automotive parts to clothing, Wal-Mart has been expanding the market concept launched in 1998. Henneberg wrote that the stores allow the company to offer fresh groceries, a pharmacy and some household items in a smaller footprint.
The company operates more than 450 Neighborhood Markets, she wrote, and each employs about 95 people.
The grocery stores also give consumers access to items sold through walmart.com.
Henneberg wrote that it offers Site to Store service, which allows customers to order merchandise online and have it delivered to their market store at no additional cost. Customers even are allowed to pay in cash when they pick up their items.
“We have a great customer base in the Harrisonburg area,” she wrote, “and we are looking to provide them with even more convenient shopping options.”
Wal-Mart has two supercenter stores in the area — one at 171 Burgess Road in the Harrisonburg Crossing Shopping Center and the other at 2160 John Wayland Highway in the Garbers Crossing Shopping Center — and has taken steps to open a third. In September, the Timberville Town Council approved a rezoning request that cleared the way for a Walmart Supercenter to be built on a 16-acre site bound by New Market Road, South Main Street and American Legion Drive.
Denver-based MVG Development, which has worked with Walmart to open Neighborhood Markets elsewhere in Virginia, is working on a project in the northern end of Harrisonburg widely expected to feature one of the company’s grocery stores as its anchor, but no one with the company has confirmed that. However, MVG has said the store would be approximately 42,000 square feet and employ 95 people, which fits the Walmart Neighborhood Grocery profile.
Contact Vic Bradshaw at 574-6279 or [email protected]
Share this: