North Dallas Residents Say Walmart at Arapaho And Coit Would Flood Streets With Traffic, Hurt Property Values, And Bring More Crime

Great piece by Eric Nicholson on Unfair Park today about residents fighting a proposed Walmart at Coit and Arapaho roads.

The area has seen a pretty steady decline in recent years, with retailers leaving and the shopping center at Coit and Campbell roads growing. But the owners have plans to add a 90,000-square-foot Walmart Supercenter to the intersection.

According to the story in the Advocate’s far north Dallas edition, residents have petitioned Sandy Greyson and area neighbors to stop the Walmart from moving in. That’ll be an uphill battle as Nicholson noted in his post.

Of course, Walmart is well practiced at handling neighborhood opposition, sometimes working with neighbors, sometimes around them to get stores built. Look at the Neighborhood Market on Lower Greenville. If you can successfully build a store literally across the street from Avi Adelman, you can build one anywhere.

I understand the residents’ concerns, especially since there’s a Walmart Neighborhood Market at Coit and Roundrock, less than a mile from the proposed Supercenter. That seems like a little too much market saturation, even for America’s most ubiquitous big box retailer.

So far, more than 1,400 people have signed a petition against the proposed Walmart, some of them claiming that the store brings in an unsavory demographic and does little to mitigate its impact on surrounding neighborhoods.

Do you think having a Supercenter in your neighborhood would lower your property values?