We’ve been patiently waiting for the Bishop’s Corner “Neighborhood Market by Walmart” to open in West Hartford. What will it be? How will the community respond? Will it be compelling enough to draw us in as regular shoppers?
Even though it seems like forever, the official announcement was made less than a year ago. The whole shopping plaza has seen a considerable amount of investment in that time. The current estimate is for Walmart to open in late February, though it still looks like they have a ways to go as the interior appeared mostly empty. This shot was taken on 1/10/2013.
We moved from WH last year (Hi, Amy!) to Texas where we came across our first Neighborhood Market by Wal-Mart. It is in a very similar neighborhood to the one in WH … and it is always empty. The prices are good and the selection is nice, but we think people won’t shop there because it is Wal-Mart. I keep waiting for the one here to close, but I think Wal-Mart would never do that because it would admit defeat (after all, have you ever seen a Wal-Mart close?)
I’ll be very curious to see how the one in WH does – combine the Wal-Mart name with the location on the back of the shopping center … seems like it just might replicate our Texas one in terms of lack of shoppers.
Hope we hear updates from you all on this later! 🙂
Hi Debra! Thanks for the thoughts. We will definitely give our feedback once it’s up and running for a bit. I used to live down south and the Super Center Walmart was always packed (in a fairly well established area in Greensboro), so I’ll be interested to see how it compares and does here. I realize they’re very different business models, but we’ll see!