Brian Lutz wrote: ↑February 23rd, 2023, 10:33 am
I'm a little surprised Walmart has much presence in Portland in the first place, it seems like the big West Coast blue cities (Seattle, Portland, SF, etc.) are generally run by people that are extremely hostile toward Walmart (and if they don't succeed in keeping them away there's plenty of other activist types that'll try to get them shut down.) Sam's Club did have one store in Seattle but it closed when they pulled out of the Pacific Northwest, and was promptly taken over by squatters.
That said, there aren't many options for Walmart to open stores in some of these areas, especially with limited and expensive real estate. In order to open a store in Bellevue Walmart opted to turn a vacant former Mervyn's in Factoria Mall (Marketplace at Factoria) into a Supercenter store. It was a rather small (70k SF) and awkwardly laid out store, and I suspect it didn't do well because they opted not to renew the 10 year lease and closed it in April of 2022.
Walmart has been a non-factor in the Portland area. I'm not sure if there is any other metro area where Walmart has a smaller presence/market share than Portland. From the tough land-use laws making large stores hard to site to city officials doing whatever they can to block them, this isn't an area where Walmart does much business.
The Hayden Meadows store was only about 85,000 sq ft yet was still considered a superstore. The few times I've been there, it was always busy. The city let them in since the zoning for the area allowed larger format stores and it replaced a vacant Best catalog showroom store that for some reason never opened. The Eastport Plaza store is a redeveloped shopping mall where they snuck in. The still-open Tigard store was supposed to be a Target but the developer at the last minute changed the tenant after the store was approved and Target pulled out of the location. The building footprint is a Target store. Wood Village seemed to welcome them in. Contrast that with Vancouver where Walmart has four stores plus a neighborhood market.
The Oregonian story above is a joke as the writer failed to mention the real reason these store is closing is because of massive theft issues. She doesn't even seem to bother to ask the Walmart spokesperson about theft. Totally clueless!
Look for more store closures in the area. The Target at Jantzen Beach has massive issues with theft. The shelves are often bare. Now the store has many aisles behind glass cases locked up. They have multiple well-armed wannabe SWAT officers walking the store. If the new bridge proposal actually happens, as I understand it, the only access to the island will be from Delta Park over a special bridge. No direct access off I-5. The will kill off the remaining retail.
Until Portland starts taking shoplifting seriously, more stores will close. Just last week, Nike asked for off-duty police officers (which Nike would pay for) be stationed at both the downtown store and the outlet on MLK. The city turned them down. The MLK store has been closed for months, expect the downtown store to close as well.