Crowds, chants welcome Sam's

Sam's Club employees are as enthusiastic as the customers at the Wesley Chapel store's opening.

By JAMES THORNER
Published May 6, 2005

WESLEY CHAPEL - For hundreds of new customers pouring into the Wesley Chapel Sam's Club, it was like running the gantlet, but with a flurry of "hellos" replacing the blows.

Lined up on both sides of the entrance, dozens of Sam's employees chanted "S-A-M-S!" as the inaugural rush of customers shoving blue shopping carts converged on the sliding glass doors.

Its official name is the "Sam's Club Cheer" and employees chanted it across the country Thursday in simultaneous Sam's openings in Wesley Chapel, Kansas, Iowa and South Carolina.

By the end of the day, thousands had passed through the 138,000-square-foot warehouse store and emerged in the filled-to-the-brim parking lot with piles of purchases.

"This is so convenient. I came on my way to work," said Sara Argen, who stocked up on dozens of rolls of toilet paper and stacks of paper cups for her New Tampa tutoring business, Huntington Learning Center. "It's even cheaper than Wal-Mart."

It's the first Sam's - Wal-Mart's members-only store - in central Pasco County and New Tampa.

Its opening at State Road 56 and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard marks the next stage in the commercialization of an intersection soon to be jammed with stores.

On the other side of Bruce B. Downs rises the shell of a JCPenney, scheduled to open in the fall. A bookstore could abut the Sam's property in the next couple of years, if developers are right.

Argen and other business owners were the first admitted on opening day, at 9 a.m., a point of frustration to some family membership card holders who had to wait behind the red ribbon until about 9:45 a.m.

"It's 9:35," one retired guy complained to a Sam's employee, stabbing his finger on an advertisement that promised a 9:30 a.m. grand opening. "It's false advertising."

The first Sam's Club opened in 1983, and the chain has spread to more than 500 stores. Everyday prices tend to be low, comparable to sale-priced items in other stores.

At the Wesley Chapel store's gas pumps, for example, "member price gasoline" sold for $2.15 a gallon (better by several cents than other stations in Land O'Lakes and Wesley Chapel, but more expensive than many stations in west Pasco).

Bargains abounded if you shopped smart. One man emerged from Sam's with a cartload of cigarettes and chewing tobacco, supplies he planned to mark up and resell at his convenience store.

As part of a public relations push, Wal-Mart, Sam's parent company, distributed $1,000 checks to sundry nonprofit groups at an outdoor ceremony before the grand opening.

Some of the happy recipients: Sand Pine Elementary School, the Pasco Sheriff's Office and the Wesley Chapel Rotary Club.

When the store was approved last year, residents of the nearby Seven Oaks neighborhood insisted Wal-Mart dispense with the typical big box store in favor of something more attractively Floridian.

More than a few customers praised the results, admiring the earth-toned paint, irregularly shaped facade and slopped barrel-tile roof.

"It looks much better than the old Sam's Club," Argen said. "It's not just a box."

[Last modified May 6, 2005, 00:38:16]