Why Can’t We Have This Kind of a WalMart at Cityplace? Thinking OUTSIDE the Big Box…
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With its staggered facades of dark composite panels and glass, the design is edgy for D.C. and for a neighborhood of older single-family homes. (On the neighborhood-facing, Third Street side, though, there is “a lot more brick,” notes Michael Hickok, the project’s lead designer.) The developer, JBG Companies, wants to attract some of the young people who have been moving to Washington in droves during recent years. Not all of them can afford to live downtown, and Fort Totten Square—within range of several universities, and not far from nightlife on H Street—could be an appealing option. The apartments will be market-rate but “competitively priced relative to other D.C. submarkets,” according to JBG’s Tony Greenberg.
They asked Hickok Cole, a D.C.-based firm that recently completed National Public Radio’s new headquarters, what it was like to work with Walmart? And the design challenges…
“We went into it with great trepidation,” Hickok admits. The design team worried not just about the retailer’s wanting supersized signage, but also about the more prosaic challenge of putting residential plumbing above a grocery store—the risk of a bathtub’s leaking onto the lettuce and broccoli. But everyone was happy with the plumbing drawings, and branding wasn’t an issue either. “When we did the [main] facade, they were sensitive about our suggestion that we have an appropriate scale for that storefront,” Hickok adds.
Fort Totten Square is expected to open in the first quarter of 2015. Let the letter-writing/email writing campaign commence!
How about a Highland Park IKEA?
If only, Dormand! I hate driving to Frisco!
Candy, one question — have they ever done this with a Sam’s Club? That’s what’s proposed — not a WalMart. I know WalMart has been more flexible. That’s how the Neighborhood Market concept evolved. But I’ve never seen an instance where the company has done it with a Sam’s Club.
I do not know but am sure going to ask my one contact at Walmart who is a very highly educated, bright young businessman!
I would be okay with store layout like this, and nothing less. I haven’t come across any Sam’s Clubs built in this fashion by Walmart. It doesn’t solve the issues of Walmart being a generally bad employer/neighbor but it’s at least less of a blight and disconnect from the rest of the neighborhood.
To be clear, it’s a Sam’s Club but I am proposing that we switch it and wonder why the City of Dallas planning department didn’t ask for this.
There is already a Walmart Market Place just across Central just S of Lemmon. Can’t see them putting another so close. I don’t think the Walmart/Sam’s at NW Hwy& Skillman is such an eye sore. I doubt the occupants of the new apts across NW at The Village are complaining.