Wal Mart Downtown

Mary Kunz Goldman says we ought to have a Wal Mart downtown. She suggests the AM&A building.

I say she’s right. If Wal Mart wants to open a store in the AM&A and not significantly change its exterior, I say go for it.

If Wal Mart would come downtown and not build at-grade parking all around it and actually let the store fit into its urban location, I say go for it.

I know Wal Mart isn’t unionized and I’m being a bad liberal by not really giving a crap if they come downtown or not, then so be it. I’m a bad liberal.

I know Wal Mart has killed off many a downtown throughout the country because mom & pops couldn’t compete. But there kind of aren’t any mom & pops on Main Street downtown. There isn’t much of anything on Main Street downtown, retail-wise. Compared to what we’ve got on Main right now, Wal Mart would look like a Brooks Brothers or Neiman Marcus by comparison.

Buffalo could do likewise. We could get a Wal-Mart and still keep the Elmwood clothes shops and the Hertel antique shops. Remember the flap a few years ago over Starbucks possibly driving Spot Coffee out of business? It didn’t happen.

So let’s talk turkey. What about a Wal-Mart in our downtown AM&A’s building? If $500 dresses didn’t sell there, $10 skirts might. Or, how about one of those old warehouses in Black Rock?

Eager to discuss locations, I called Philip Serghini, Wal-Mart’s community affairs manager for New York and New England. He seemed receptive.

“We do look for people who want us to go into their market,” he said. “And we’re going more and more into urban areas.”

We talked of new city Wal-Marts in New Orleans and Los Angeles. The L.A store, Serghini said, moved into an existing building and is tall rather than wide.

What about a Wal-Mart on our waterfront? OK, I’m just kidding. But it would sure beat a casino.

Not waterfront. I don’t want to continue Benderson’s plazafication of Buffalo. (Go on Delaware between the Scajaquada and Kenmore Ave if you want to know what I mean). If a Wal Mart or Target or Kohls, etc. want to come downtown they need to fit in with downtown. That would be my only issue.

I know there’d be people on both sides of the Wal Mart “issue”, protesting for and against such a store. I wouldn’t get involved either way.