Wal-Mart: "A company that has changed stores as casually as you and I change shoes."

According to Sprawlbusters, there are at any given point in time between 300 and 350 dead Wal-Mart discount stores littering the landscape. And they are in NO hurry to repurpose those ugly eyesores - - colossal structures often built  with city and state tax money in the form of "grants," deferments, and TIFs.

From the PBS special STORE WARS: WHEN WAL-MART COMES TO TOWN -

Empty Boxes

Wal-Mart stores are often the size of four or five football fields - huge in scale compared to many of the small communities that they neighbor. Criticized for deserting stores that under-perform, Wal-Mart has left behind more than 25 million square feet of unoccupied space across the country (May, 2000). The company claims it tries to sell these properties, but the only potential buyers are other big retailers, and Wal-Mart will not sell real estate to its competitors. In one Kentucky town, an empty Wal-Mart was torn down at the taxpayers' expense.

"They place their stores so close together that they become their own competition. Once everybody else is wiped out, then they're free to thin out their stores. Wal-Mart has 390 empty stores on the market today. This is a company that has changed stores as casually as you and I change shoes."

- Al Norman, Sprawl-Busters

Is it any wonder Saukville, Wisconsin needs to hold the retail giant's feet to the fire?

Amendment may affect plans for Wal-Mart

Saukville - If a Wal-Mart Supercenter is built in Saukville, the village might want assurances that Wal-Mart will find a way to reuse its existing store at 825 E. Green Bay Ave.

The Plan Commission will consider tonight whether to recommend amending a village ordinance governing buildings larger than 50,000 square feet. The amendment says that if a new building, such as a Supercenter, causes a current business to relocate within the village, the proposal "shall include a reuse plan for the structure being vacated as well as the proposed new building."

The amendment also would require the developer or the new building owner to pay for marketing the reuse plans.

Wal-Mart last week submitted initial site plans for a Supercenter on the east side of I-43 less than a mile north of Highway 33, said Brian Biernat, the community development director.

From The News & Observer of North Carolina:

Old Wal-Marts linger empty
Closings leave towns with 'a giant hole'

Eric Bishop, Staff Writer

HILLSBOROUGH - The massive building sits abandoned behind hundreds of empty parking spaces at the Hillsborough Commons shopping center.

Once bustling with shoppers, the former Wal-Mart just off South Churton Street has been quiet since the retail giant replaced it in 2003 with a Wal-Mart Supercenter three times its size a few miles up Interstate 85.

"The day they left, it was like a tomb over there," said Mark Bateman, who owned a video store a few doors down and saw his and other merchants' sales suffer without Wal-Mart pulling shoppers in.

Empty Wal-Mart buildings plague communities across the nation. At any given time, about 350 former Wal-Marts lie vacant in America, according to Al Norman of Sprawl-Busters, an organization that opposes big-box stores. At least nine empty former Wal-Mart spaces -- the equivalent of 12 football fields in size -- occupied North Carolina as of February, Norman said.

In Knightdale, plans are under way to close a Wal-Mart and build a supercenter a mile away. The retailer, however, hasn't found a new occupant for the existing building, which it owns. Wal-Mart is planning to market the space, said spokesman Kevin Thornton.

Supercenters -- which include full-service groceries and are about twice the size of Wal-Mart's discount stores -- help meet customers' one-stop shopping needs, Thornton said from the company's Arkansas headquarters.

They also make Wal-Mart more money, said James F. Smith, professor of finance at UNC-Chapel Hill.

"It's way more profitable, a way more efficient use of space," he said.

As of July, Wal-Mart had 81 supercenters in North Carolina, and only 34 discount stores.

The retailer's shift to massive supercenters, though, means more empty Wal-Marts in towns such as Hillsborough.

"It's just a giant hole in the community that can last for years," said Julia Christensen, a former university lecturer now writing a book on how communities reuse empty big box stores.

Christensen said the buildings' sheer size -- ranging from 60,000 to 200,000 square feet -- makes them tough to fill, especially when Wal-Mart or another big-box retailer restricts how its former sites can be used to avoid competition.

Despite the challenges, the infrastructure and locations of many empty big-box stores can be attractive for prospective businesses, Christensen said. Many of them are reused, living on as flea markets, churches or even schools.

Part of the Wal-Mart building in Hillsborough was converted in 2004 into a 10,000-square-foot Dollar Tree. Most of the space, though, remains vacant.

Hillsborough officials say they'd like to see their old Wal-Mart building become an entertainment spot.

"It'd be a perfect place for a bowling alley or a skating rink," said Margaret Wood Cannell, executive director of the Hillsborough Area Chamber of Commerce. "But so far, nothing."

The future of the empty space remains a mystery for its neighbors.

"I don't know what the holdup is," said Eric Rodgers, 46, an optometrist with an office at Hillsborough Commons. "I think it's too good a spot in the middle of a town that's growing to stay empty."

Several businesses have expressed interest, community leaders said, but none has been able to work out a deal with the companies that have managed the property, The Shopping Center Group and before that Florida-based Tricor International.

Former Hillsborough Mayor Joe Phelps said Tricor CEO Marc Hagle told him in 2004 that he wanted to market the property to national companies. Hagle -- who is also CEO of the property owner, Hillsborough Commons L.P. -- did not return multiple phone calls.

"It's very hard to get ahold of the rental company," Cannell said. "It does not appear that re-leasing the old Wal-Mart space is a priority for The Shopping Center Group."

Representatives from The Shopping Center Group said they respond to all inquiries but haven't found the right tenant.

That tenant can't be a department store or wholesale store, according to restrictions Wal-Mart imposed when it bought out its lease, which ran until 2009, said Thornton.

And with redevelopment in the works for nearby Daniel Boone Village and the soon-to-come Waterstone project between I-85 and I-40, prospective tenants may soon have some new, more exciting options.

Meanwhile, the Hillsborough Commons shopping center remains adrift. "Wal-Mart was the anchor," said Robin Taylor-Hall, president of the Hillsborough Area Chamber of Commerce. "When the anchor closes, it affects all the other stores."

Bateman sold his video store soon after Wal-Mart closed.

The new owner closed for good in May, and two more stores have closed. Just eight of the 15 retail spaces are occupied.

Losing Wal-Mart, Bateman said, left "just a dead feeling in that shopping center."