THAT’S BUSINESS

Riverdale Neighborhood Market waiting for ‘go’; Kroger expanding stores

— The new Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market in the Riverdale Center in Little Rock is just about ready.

The little parking-lot islands, planted with trees and mulched, are floating in a pristine black sea (with white stripes). The old Harvest Foods exterior with its trademark symbol in the shape of an apple has been Wal-Marted, and the only thing between you and the gas pumps is yellow ribbon.

So how close is it?

In terms of distance, it’s not nearly close enough for the small but growing number of residents of downtown. As new urbanists, they want to be able to walk to where they shop. But the Neighborhood Market is nearly three miles from what is arguably the heart of downtown, Main Street and Capitol Avenue.

The closest supermarket to downtown is easily Edwards Food Giant at 17th and Main streets. And depending on how expansive you want to be in defining downtown, it’s walkable, although still about three-quarters of a mile from the city center.

“I don’t think that we are going to see a Wal-Mart Supercenter-type store in the heart of downtown,” said Sharon Priest, executive director of the Downtown Partnership. “I think there’s room for stores that are maybe 5,000 square feet.”

In terms of the opening of the 65,000-square-foot Riverdale store, which is about 50 percent larger than the typical Neighborhood Market,the Bentonville-based retailer would only say mid-July.

But if you want to make plans for the opening, a subcontractor at the store the other day getting his tools out of the back of his sport utility vehicle said flatly: July 18.

None of this comes as a surprise to Joe Bell, regional official for Kroger, Wal-Mart’s biggest grocery competitor in Arkansas.

Bell, manager of marketing and public affairs for the Kroger Delta Division, knows Wal-Mart quite well. Turf wars is the game, otherwise known as market share.

Wal-Mart dominates in Arkansas, including in the Little Rock area.

“In Arkansas, you’re not going to come close to Wal-Mart ... because it’s their home base.”

Kroger is about 75 percent of the way through its five-year $125 million expansion and up-grade plan for Arkansas, which it announced three years ago, Bell said.

“We’ve expanded our square footage in the Little Rock area by almost a third,” he said.

On Wednesday, Kroger opened one of its Marketplace stores - in Conway.

It’s a twin to the store on Little Rock’s Chenal Parkway - so it will offer infant car seats, clothes, beds, kitchen appliances, home-decorating advice, even jewelry, and will more than double the space in the Conway store it replaces, Bell said. To staff 123,000 square feet, it hired 140 more employees, which brought the total to 300, he said.

The company also is replacing its store on Arkansas10 West in Little Rock with a Marketplace, to open in the fall. And it will be looking at increasing employment there by numbers similar to Conway’s, Bell said.

Wal-Mart’s Riverdale Center store will hire a staff of about 90 employees.

Business, Pages 66 on 07/01/2012

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