The Best Little Wal-Mart in Mississippi

Before & After the Mississippi Renewal Charrette.
(Click on the photo for a larger image.)

IT LOOKS LIKE one of the early successes of the Mississippi Renewal charrette may be the design for the new "Wal-Mart Neighborhood Center" in Pass Christian. The big box store sits behind a big parking lot on US 90, the gulf coast highway that runs from one side of the state to the other. Usually New Urbanists are pretty negative about Wal-Mart (I wrote about the store here and here — and there's some earlier info about Pass Christian here), but the charrette changed the rules.

First, we were working with disaster victims, many of whom had lost everything. Second, unlike 99% of the businesses after Katrina, Wal-Mart could afford to self-insure and start up right away — and they're the largest employer in Mississippi and very popular in the state. So who were we to tell the people they couldn't like Wal-Mart?

We discovered that some of the Wal-Marts along the coast drew 75% of their shoppers from within a 2 or 3 mile radius around the store, and that's unusual — people typically drive long distances to get to the Wal-Mart Supercenters. And using the first three rules of real estate — location, location and location — they were ideally located to be a neighborhood center. When English architect Ben Pentreath drew some preliminary Wal-Mart Neighborhood Center designs and the local Wal-Mart representatives liked them so much that a Renewal charrette team was invited to meet with Wal-Mart executives at the headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, it seemed like the stars were aligned.

In a nutshell, the team proposed "wrapping" the Wal-Mart box on three sides with mixed-use buildings, and creating a neighborhood around that with a mix of buildings and uses denser than one can make using only single-family houses. People will have more reasons than Wal-Mart to come to and stay in the neighborhood, and a significant number of people will be able to walk to the stores.

Here's are some excerpts from the preliminary report by the Mississippi Renewal team that went to Bentonville. The full report is here.

2.      Architecture:  They are actively considering the mixed-used, multi-level Wal-Mart design that Ben Pentreath drew for Pass Christian during the Forum charrette.  They did call us on the carpet about the architectural style, though.  One of them said he had heard that Ben was from England, and that although he thought his drawing was beautiful, he respectfully said that it looked like Buckingham Palace! [This must have been before Wal-Mart's CEO visited Prince Charles in London — see below.] They said they were more interested in an architecture for the Pass Christian store that reflected the South.  (Yes, you've read this correctly.)

3.      Suburban vs. Urban:  Before the Mississippi Forum, Wal-Mart hadn't considered an urban building model to be appropriate along the Gulf Coast.  They said they've only built urban buildings where there was already an urban setting, and mostly out of the U.S.  They normally don't create the urban setting themselves.  We were asked, "When is the Wal-Mart Village coming to Pass Christian?" in reference to Tom Low's charrette drawing. 

Full Report

I'd like to report back on a very successful meeting with Wal-Mart officials at their headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas yesterday.  Our team included two residents and one official from the City of Pass Christian, Victor Dover (charrette team leader for Ocean Springs), and myself.  We were all treated very respectfully and the dialogue was open, friendly and creative.  The Wal-Mart team consisted of the following:

*       Vice President, Real Estate and Design
*       Director, Real Estate and Design
*       Project Director, Real Estate and Design
*       Real Estate Central Team (covering Mississippi)
*       Project Engineer, Experimental Projects
*       Director, State Government Relations

This is what we learned from them:

1.      Prototypical designs:  Wal-Mart is actively working on what theycall "non-prototypical" designs, including green and multilevel urbanbuildings.  Green buildings they are most proud of are those in McKinney, Texas and Aurora, Colorado.  Lots of cool "green" stuff, but both buildings still have long blank walls and sit behind large parking lots.  They also showed us examples of their urban, multi-level buildings.  From my notes, these examples are in Honolulu, Baldwin Hills, Korea, Coral Springs and Long Beach.  Most of them looked like they had public streets in front of them.  When I expressed my surprise that I hadn't heard about these, one of them remarked that the only news that gets written about Wal-Mart is bad news.  Currently, though, they see this model being used mostly in dense urban settings outside of the U.S.

2.      Architecture:  They are actively considering the mixed-used, multi-level Wal-Mart design that Ben Pentreath drew for Pass Christian during the Forum charrette.  They did call us on the carpet about the architectural style, though.  One of them said he had heard that Ben was from England, and that although he thought his drawing was beautiful, he respectfully said that it looked like Buckingham Palace!  They said they were more interested in an architecture for the Pass Christian store that reflected the South.  (Yes, you've read this correctly.)

3.      Suburban vs. Urban:  Before the Mississippi Forum, Wal-Mart hadn't considered an urban building model to be appropriate along the Gulf Coast.  They said they've only built urban buildings where there was already an urban setting, and mostly out of the U.S.  They normally don't create the urban setting themselves.  We were asked, "When is the Wal-Mart Village coming to Pass Christian?" in reference to Tom Low's charrette drawing. 

4.      SmartCode:  We told them that the Pass Christian SmartCode could enable the development of the Wal-Mart Village.  As a group, they were interested in learning more about the SmartCode.  None of them had heard about it before.  One of them said that it sounded like a great idea because the same rules would then apply to everyone - not one set of standards for Wal-Mart and one set of standards for everyone else as is often the case in the communities where they work.  At least two of them are now planning to attend the SmartCode workshop in Biloxi in March.

5.      Wal-Mart and New Urbanism:  After the meeting, one of them told me that New Urbanist communities only have high end stores and that the regular people need to have places to shop, too.  Having a Wal-Mart included in these projects would increase diversity and choice.

6.      Pace of rebuilding:  We made it very clear that the Pass Christian Mayor and Board of Aldermen want Wal-Mart rebuilt as soon as possible since it had represented 15% of their city budget prior to Katrina. They do not want design considerations to slow down the rebuilding.  One of the Wal-Mart executives told a member of our team, "But quick doesn't have to mean ugly."

7.      Follow up:  They have given us their commitment to send 1-2 people from Wal-Mart's Real Estate and Design division to the Pass Christian SmartCode charrette Feb. 15-19 to work on the design of the Pass Christian Wal-Mart store and/or village.  We told them that this would be a roll-up-your-sleeves-event where real plans would be made. They said they understood this and they then gave us the names of their local architects for follow-up.

We couldn't have asked for a better meeting, and we remain very hopeful about the implications for Pass Christian, Ocean Springs and other communities.