Wal-Mart plans to build Sam's Club on SR 50

Wal-Mart plans to build a Sam's Club warehouse just east of its supercenter on State Road 50, meaning it will soon have four big-box stores in the county.

Representatives from the company will meet with county staffers next week to present its proposal for the 30-acre lot, said David Campbell of Kimley-Horn and Associates Inc., the retailer's engineering firm.

Though the design is still in the early stages, he said, the store will have about 135,000-square-feet of floor space, less than the neighboring supercenter, which covers more than 200,000.

The company is building a supercenter in Brooksville and plans one on U.S. 19 south of Osowaw Boulevard.

The Sam's Club plan, like the company's other recent proposals, has already proved to be polarizing. Some residents think the company is intent on destroying the countryside as well as the county's other retailers. Other people are talking about the bargains on high-quality merchandise that Sam's offers.

County commissioners were miffed that the property owner gave them no hint of his plans for the property when it was rezoned two weeks ago.

"They won't have to call this Hernando County. They can call it Wal-Mart County," said Arline Erdrich of the Coalition for Anti-Urban Sprawl Efforts, or CAUSE, which has been the most vocal opponent of the supercenter on U.S. 19.

"It's outrageous that that kind of development should even be considered here after the three supercenters. . . . What do they possibly think this county should look like?"

Having three supercenters and a Sam's Club in a county the size of Hernando is unusual, said Daniel Binder, a retail industry analyst with Buckingham Research Group in New York City.

But the company has a well-established strategy of trying to dominate markets, especially ones like Hernando with a large number of low- and middle-income residents.

"They cluster stores and they protect their turf," he said.

"And they are predatory, it seems. They want to conquer the world, and they are good at what they do."

But Sam's Clubs appeal to somewhat different shoppers than supercenters do, said another analyst, Lori Whilking of H&R Block Financial Advisors.

Shoppers must first pay a $35 membership fee, which is slightly lower than those for its competing warehouse clubs, and Sam's Clubs are well-known as good places to buy standard items in bulk.

Sam's Clubs generally attract higher-income customers than supercenters do, she said, and offer better quality merchandise, including electrical equipment, watches and a wide variety of current books and movies.

Buyers for the store also snap up large shipments of certain items if they can find a good deal and turn them around as specials offered in clubs around the country. Last year, for example, the outlets sold huge quantities of Birkenstock sandals.

Commissioners Diane Rowden and Betty Whitehouse said they like to shop at Sam's Club. They also said the site, next to one of the county's busiest commercial hubs, is probably a good place for the store.

But both said the owner of the Sam's Club parcel, Charles Taylor, should have informed them that the store was coming when he asked for the rezoning of part of the parcel on June 5. He told commissioner he had no definite plans for the site, they said.

"Basically, we're left being blindsided with this information. There's something that drastically needs to be changed in the zoning regulations so decisionmakers are aware of all the information," Rowden said.

One possible solution, Rowden said, is a special zoning classification for big-box stores or other large retail outlets.

Taylor was not available for comment Wednesday. Wal-Mart officials did not return several telephone calls to its headquarters in Arkansas.

Jerry Greif, the county's chief planner, said Taylor brought requested zoning changes for two tracts to the June 5 meeting, both of which make up part of the 30-acre Sam's Club parcel. The largest of these tracts was zoned to allow an asphalt plant.

That means the property would have almost certainly been rezoned for commercial use even if the commission knew the landowner's plans, Whitehouse said.

"To me, commercial is much less offensive than asphalt. I didn't see this as a difficult rezoning," she said.

Also, she said, the Sam's Club should be a good test of county ordinances passed last year that require design features on big-box stores and enhanced landscaping of commercial developments.

At the time, several commissioners pointed to the existing supercenter as the type of construction they wanted to prevent.

"I think there's going to be a huge difference" between the two stores, Whitehouse said. "I think it should make them look like night and day."

Rowden agreed with Erdrich that the county will be saturated with Wal-Mart stores once all of its projects are completed.

But that does not mean the company is done building stores here, the analysts said. Wal-Mart has developed a new concept called neighborhood markets. The markets are about the size of conventional supermarkets and designed to be more convenient. They hope to take advantage of their huge distribution network and take on chains such as Winn-Dixie and Publix.

"They are currently testing smaller grocery stores," Wilking said. "That's going to be another driver for them."

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