“Almost all of these (Walmarts) were left empty when the company built a larger store nearby.” That’s a quote from an important article included in this post.
As you may already know, Baltimore Rising is encouraging residents of Baltimore County’s District 4, represented by Councilman Julian Jones, to voice their opposition to Kimco’s redevelopment plan for its Owings Mills Mall property. Kimco’s current plan is to build a big box store strip center on the property, anchored by a new Walmart Supercenter.
This new strip center is called the “Owings Mills Town Center” for no real reason other than to make it sound like more than two rows of very large stores separated by a huge parking lot. This big box strip center will steal stores and customers from established shopping centers nearby. In the process, the Walmart Supercenter on Liberty Road and the Walmart on Reisterstown Road, both of them, will close, as will other small retail operations that depend upon customer traffic coming and going from these Walmarts.
Won’t other big box stores soon replace these Walmarts? Not if Walmart has anything to say about it. They’ll close their Liberty Road and Reisterstown Road stores alright, but then keep them that way. Shut down and vacant.
“Would Walmart really do that? Close stores that are currently doing well and then keep them empty?”
Well, for those of you who question whether or not Walmart would close a store and leave it empty to avoid it being leased to a competitor, the answer is, “In a heartbeat.” There’s even a name for it in the industry. They’re called “dark stores” and here’s an article that will explain what we’re talking about. It’s two pages long. If you don’t have time to read all of it, at least read the first three paragraphs. You’ll get the point and understand why we’re opposed to Kimco’s current plans for its Mall property.
“Big Box Blight: The Spread of Dark Stores“
If you have time while you’re vising our website, please read the following article and our petition for Councilman Jones which we encourage you to sign. Here are the links you’ll need…
“Petition Related To The Redevelopment Of The Owings Mills Mall Property“
