Wal Mart Closing 02/06 Sacramento, CA El Camino Ave.

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
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Wal Mart Closing 02/06 Sacramento, CA El Camino Ave.

Post by storewanderer »

Interesting closure. This is a two floor Wal Mart in a former Wards building. The layoff notice filed with the state says 359 employees. A store with that many employees, it would appear, must have been doing some pretty good volume.

Across the road, a new WinCo opened in a former Gottschalks in 2016.

Across the road, Macys closed its very dated former Weinstocks in 2017.

There is also a Sam's Club behind the Wal Mart, which is also closed/closing this month or next month.
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Re: Wal Mart Closing 02/06 Sacramento, CA El Camino Ave.

Post by Alpha8472 »

This closure is most likely due to massive shoplifting. The store may do a ton of business, but all the corporate office cares about is how much shoplifting is going on. If there is too much shoplifting and low profit, then the corporate office is willing to kill the store. Shoplifting is not just the mobs of people stealing merchandise. It could also be massive internal theft as well. I heard from Walmart employees that a dairy truck with over $20,000 worth of dairy products was stolen. That was not a random attack. Someone on the inside must have leaked the information and coordinated a plan to steal it.

Also there are problems with cashiers stealing money. There was a cashier that stole over $14,000 over several months. The store took months to take action before calling the police. Killing a Walmart store is not just to cut losses, but to punish the employees at the store. They will be let go and not reassigned. Walmart doesn't want such people to go on to other stores and ruin those stores as well. It could be a ring of people stealing from within.

The land is most likely very valuable. It could easily be converted to condominiums and bring in much more profit that way. I don't know if Walmart owns the land or if someone else owns the land. If someone else owns the land, they probably realize that they can make much more money using it to build condos.
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Re: Wal Mart Closing 02/06 Sacramento, CA El Camino Ave.

Post by pseudo3d »

Walmart does close stores due to shoplifting reasons. The first and arguably one of the most infamous cases was Hearne, Texas back in 1990, which had closed to internal shoplifting and never replaced (eventually it was renovated into a high school in the mid-2000s).
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Re: Wal Mart Closing 02/06 Sacramento, CA El Camino Ave.

Post by J-Man »

I wonder if this will be the final death knell for the old Country Club Centre, which used to be a regular mall with Montgomery Ward and Rhodes/Liberty House as its two anchors. And Country Club Plaza, across the street, can't be doing that well if the Macy's (which was a much larger store than the one at the nearby Arden Fair) closed. I remember at one time there was a plan to build a walkway across Watt Ave. to connect the two malls and make them one property (like South Coast Plaza and Crystal Court.)
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Re: Wal Mart Closing 02/06 Sacramento, CA El Camino Ave.

Post by wnetmacman »

pseudo3d wrote: January 27th, 2018, 7:50 am Walmart does close stores due to shoplifting reasons. The first and arguably one of the most infamous cases was Hearne, Texas back in 1990, which had closed to internal shoplifting and never replaced (eventually it was renovated into a high school in the mid-2000s).
Hearne wasn't closed due to shoplifting. Hearne's sales were not enough to make it profitable. Hearne was notable because it was one of the first stores Walmart closed outright. Hearne was then, and is now, an economically depressed area, having lost multiple major employers over the last 30 years. That, combined with its proximity to other stores (like College Station) made it not viable to keep open. In 1990, Walmart was in massive expansion mode, and any closure made the news. Walmart would have worked on internal losses way before the store would have been closed.
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Re: Wal Mart Closing 02/06 Sacramento, CA El Camino Ave.

Post by pseudo3d »

wnetmacman wrote: January 27th, 2018, 7:49 pm
pseudo3d wrote: January 27th, 2018, 7:50 am Walmart does close stores due to shoplifting reasons. The first and arguably one of the most infamous cases was Hearne, Texas back in 1990, which had closed to internal shoplifting and never replaced (eventually it was renovated into a high school in the mid-2000s).
Hearne wasn't closed due to shoplifting. Hearne's sales were not enough to make it profitable. Hearne was notable because it was one of the first stores Walmart closed outright. Hearne was then, and is now, an economically depressed area, having lost multiple major employers over the last 30 years. That, combined with its proximity to other stores (like College Station) made it not viable to keep open. In 1990, Walmart was in massive expansion mode, and any closure made the news. Walmart would have worked on internal losses way before the store would have been closed.
I'll have to look at my archives again, but the shoplifting reason wasn't repeated in more mainstream papers (and the Eagle papers aren't easily found online), and it definitely wasn't distance related. The Bryan store was 20 miles away (opened 1982), but that was the same distance between Navasota and College Station (the Navasota store opened around 1980, College Station 1988), the stores in Rockdale and Taylor were able to co-exist (about 25 miles between them), the Navasota and Hempstead stores (about 20 miles), and of course the Bryan and College Station stores (less than 5 miles).

All those stores and their descendants still exist. The Bryan store was replaced in the early 1990s with a new Supercenter. The College Station store underwent two expansions, with the current store being a modern Supercenter (but in the original building). The Rockdale and Taylor stores were replaced with new Supercenters (despite Rockdale being economically depressed since Alcoa shut down operations there, and the continuing effects, like recent announcements of the power plant closing). The Hempstead and Caldwell stores still operate. The Navasota store got a few repaints and interior updates but still carries the pre-1990s WAL-MART lettering and may be replaced (it depends on if the construction behind it is the Supercenter).
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Re: Wal Mart Closing 02/06 Sacramento, CA El Camino Ave.

Post by storewanderer »

Also closing a Division 1 Store in Winona, MS on 01/30. 85 employees impacted.
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Re: Wal Mart Closing 02/06 Sacramento, CA El Camino Ave.

Post by wnetmacman »

pseudo3d wrote: January 27th, 2018, 8:31 pm I'll have to look at my archives again, but the shoplifting reason wasn't repeated in more mainstream papers (and the Eagle papers aren't easily found online), and it definitely wasn't distance related. The Bryan store was 20 miles away (opened 1982), but that was the same distance between Navasota and College Station (the Navasota store opened around 1980, College Station 1988), the stores in Rockdale and Taylor were able to co-exist (about 25 miles between them), the Navasota and Hempstead stores (about 20 miles), and of course the Bryan and College Station stores (less than 5 miles).

All those stores and their descendants still exist. The Bryan store was replaced in the early 1990s with a new Supercenter. The College Station store underwent two expansions, with the current store being a modern Supercenter (but in the original building). The Rockdale and Taylor stores were replaced with new Supercenters (despite Rockdale being economically depressed since Alcoa shut down operations there, and the continuing effects, like recent announcements of the power plant closing). The Hempstead and Caldwell stores still operate. The Navasota store got a few repaints and interior updates but still carries the pre-1990s WAL-MART lettering and may be replaced (it depends on if the construction behind it is the Supercenter).
You're correct in stating that all these stores still exist, but Hearne was the store that, at the time, put them over the top in capacity.. In retail, it's not that a town has a store, but that a town can support a store with the next closest stores surrounding it. Sometimes, that capacity is short, and an extra store is added. Sometimes, retailers over-expand. In 1990, Hearne couldn't support that store. The next-closest stores were cannibalizing business from it. Walmart couldn't turn it around. My understanding of Hearne in the 1980's was that there was a severe drop in jobs, in the thousands. When you have a town of 5000, losing thousands of jobs will hurt badly. Even today, Hearne hasn't fully recovered from the 80's. For Hearne to afford to replace the high school, Walmart donated the building.
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Re: Wal Mart Closing 02/06 Sacramento, CA El Camino Ave.

Post by pseudo3d »

wnetmacman wrote: January 28th, 2018, 9:39 am
pseudo3d wrote: January 27th, 2018, 8:31 pm I'll have to look at my archives again, but the shoplifting reason wasn't repeated in more mainstream papers (and the Eagle papers aren't easily found online), and it definitely wasn't distance related. The Bryan store was 20 miles away (opened 1982), but that was the same distance between Navasota and College Station (the Navasota store opened around 1980, College Station 1988), the stores in Rockdale and Taylor were able to co-exist (about 25 miles between them), the Navasota and Hempstead stores (about 20 miles), and of course the Bryan and College Station stores (less than 5 miles).

All those stores and their descendants still exist. The Bryan store was replaced in the early 1990s with a new Supercenter. The College Station store underwent two expansions, with the current store being a modern Supercenter (but in the original building). The Rockdale and Taylor stores were replaced with new Supercenters (despite Rockdale being economically depressed since Alcoa shut down operations there, and the continuing effects, like recent announcements of the power plant closing). The Hempstead and Caldwell stores still operate. The Navasota store got a few repaints and interior updates but still carries the pre-1990s WAL-MART lettering and may be replaced (it depends on if the construction behind it is the Supercenter).
You're correct in stating that all these stores still exist, but Hearne was the store that, at the time, put them over the top in capacity.. In retail, it's not that a town has a store, but that a town can support a store with the next closest stores surrounding it. Sometimes, that capacity is short, and an extra store is added. Sometimes, retailers over-expand. In 1990, Hearne couldn't support that store. The next-closest stores were cannibalizing business from it. Walmart couldn't turn it around. My understanding of Hearne in the 1980's was that there was a severe drop in jobs, in the thousands. When you have a town of 5000, losing thousands of jobs will hurt badly. Even today, Hearne hasn't fully recovered from the 80's. For Hearne to afford to replace the high school, Walmart donated the building.
The Bryan store wasn't the one doing the damage (by the time the Bryan store moved close to the bypass as a Supercenter, the Hearne store already closed), the "market couldn't support it" because it was being robbed blind. While there isn't access to newspapers circa 1990, here's one newspaper article from 2004 that brings that up if you wanted real news and not message board hearsay. Hearne isn't just economically depressed (lots of smaller towns are), it's notorious for local corruption, and has been for years.
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Re: Wal Mart Closing 02/06 Sacramento, CA El Camino Ave.

Post by wnetmacman »

pseudo3d wrote: January 28th, 2018, 2:42 pm The Bryan store wasn't the one doing the damage (by the time the Bryan store moved close to the bypass as a Supercenter, the Hearne store already closed), the "market couldn't support it" because it was being robbed blind. While there isn't access to newspapers circa 1990, here's one newspaper article from 2004 that brings that up if you wanted real news and not message board hearsay. Hearne isn't just economically depressed (lots of smaller towns are), it's notorious for local corruption, and has been for years.
I didn't say it was killed by neighboring Supercenters, because there weren't any yet. I said neighboring stores were taking its business, and the economy in the town was such that it couldn't support any form of store.

As for the newspaper, I trust small town Texas newspapers about as much as I trust the gossip column, because that's all most of them are. I have found evidence that Walmart closed this store due to lack of business. At that point, only a very, VERY small number of Walmart stores had closed for any reason, much less relocation or expansion. If you read Sam's autobiography, he mentions this store for lack of business, and one in Irving, TX. Irving was rampant with internal theft, but was turned around and brought back to eventually be relocated. There was no hope of bringing this store back to profitability because it didn't sell enough.
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