A tale of three Wal-Marts
Having served on my local HOA and been involved in a few of Lexington’s planning commission meetings, I have a new appreciation for things like architectural design and street layouts. Most people just go about their business and probably don’t notice, but informed eyes see subtle differences.
Take these three new Wal-Mart stores, for example. They were all constructed within a span of about four months of each other, so you’d think they would all look fairly similar. You be the judge.
First up, the new Wal-Mart supercenter in Cynthiana, Kentucky:
This store probably looks like many other Wal-Marts that you’ve seen sporting that classic blue color. Now, check out the new Paris, Kentucky version about 15 miles away from Cynthiana:
Clearly, a little more effort went into this one. Gone is the flat blue cinder block front, having been replaced with a more attractive facade and some relief between sections of the building. If you had to have a Wal-Mart nearby, wouldn’t you prefer this one over the first? Finally, have a look at Lexington’s latest model a mere 20 miles from Paris:
This one could almost pass for presenting a look like the mythical “traditional town planning” with cute, separate little shops and some actual pedestrian walkways. Again, you’d take this one before the others, wouldn’t you?
So what gives here? If you get to choose what your Wal-Mart looks like, why would a town pick the old blue fugly one? The answer is that they probably didn’t get a choice.
Developers will present the cheapest, most basic plan to a city’s commission and hope that it gets approved. If not, they’ll tweak it just a little and try again. Eventually, they’ll wear down the commission and ram one through. Some towns need the business and employment worse than others, so they might give in early because they don’t want to take a chance that Wal-Mart walks away from the table. Any planning commission will tell you that the Cynthiana Wal-Mart looks better than this one:
Money and economy always factor in, and developers are kings.
Lexington is running out of space to develop, so in the last few years our commission has been pickier about what they let in. To help themselves out, they’ve created some special zonings in the last outlying areas of the municipality with special restrictions and requirements. And good for them! The result is the best looking Wal-Mart of the bunch.
Last year, our neighborhood got a new Rite Aid store on the corner of the front entrance. The developers actually came to our HOA asking for help in getting their plan approved and boy were they slick! HOAs carry some weight with a planning commission because they represent the people who will have to live next to the stuff that gets built. If they like it, then the commission is probably going to like it, too.
The Rite Aid goons that came to us had already tried to get their basic plan passed, to no avail. Turns out that the corner of our entrance is one of those special new zonings. There was already a gas station there, so they first came to us with the “if you help us out, you’ll finally have something besides that ugly gas station” pitch.
We weren’t swayed. We’d seen some ugly Rite Aids and we hoped we could do better. We talked to some of the city’s planning staff employees for advice. The staff reviews plans and makes recommendations to the commission. They gave us some ideas of what they were after to satisfy the special zoning.
After several meetings and a lot of headaches, we finally got this:
Among the improvements that we got were some stone on the bottom and sides to compliment the stone on most houses in the area and the gas station, lots more trees and shrubbery than the minimum requirement, plenty of wide sidewalks that connect to other walkways, and the whole site sitting down in the ground a few feet so you don’t have to see a bunch of cars as you drive by (the chintzy signs were approved separately and are a whole other story).
While you might not think ours is the best looking Rite Aid you’ve ever seen, consider an alternative in Cynthiana:
Yikes!
The whole experience of dealing with those dolts soured me on Rite Aid altogether. I still fill my prescriptions at the Walgreens a couple miles away.