Everyone and their mother is upset about the revived plans to place a Wal Mart neighborhood market grocery store at the Westfield Town Center mall, next to Sears. Jana Adkins at the Signal has a good piece on the infrastructure challenges facing the store and the City's role in approving those changes, but what I'm more interested in is how people are reacting and what it says about our town.
Over at The Signal, the consensus is that a Town Center mall Wal Mart could be the end of our 21 year old mall as we know it. The concerns center around two things: A WalMart doesn't fit the 'character' of the mall and parking would be terrible.
You see the former sentiment now and again in the SCV. Wal Mart, and other down-market retailers, don't fit in with x neighborhood or y shopping center. I think when people say this, they're saying more about how they want the SCV to be than what the SCV actually is. They have an aspirational view of Santa Clarita: they think of it as a smaller Irvine, or a more cozy Anaheim. You know, some place white and upper-middle class, a place trending more toward Nordstrom's than Penny's, more Tar-jay than Wal Mart.
The reality is that the SCV is positively lower and middle class, and any trends toward upper class were probably just fueled by debt during the real estate boom years. Think about furniture stores in the SCV: We're now +5 years since the Great Recession and one of the first things to go bust after the recession hit was high end furniture stores like Ethan Allen.
None of them have returned.
In the meantime, Wal Mart & Target continue to grow, expand, and succeed in the SCV. Even the $0.99 Cent store opened a second store in the SCV post-recession! Hell, the La-Z-Boy store on Pico Canyon is now a Goodwill, and a Goodwill took over another old furniture space on Soledad. And that dumpy K-Mart at Bouquet Junction somehow continues to hang on.
Sorry folks, but this is a Wal Mart community through and through. Sure, we may have an Apple Store (a development I admit thinking would usher in many other high-end retailers), but our mall is pretty standard and run-of-the-mill, with everything from a Macy's and Penny's to Gap, Sears and aggressive kiosk salespeople. It's certainly no Glendale Galleria or even Northridge Fashion Center, let alone the Westfield Topanga.
As for parking, if the Wal Mart goes in, there will be an increase in demand for parking. It's not possible to build more land and the existing lots are already at or near capacity, so supply is limited. When you have a scarce resource that's in high demand, it's only logical to start charging people for it. What's more, we have a captive audience in the SCV, there is no other mall to go to, no one for Westfield to compete with at least in our valley. So, I think people would pay a reasonable $3 per day fee to park close to the mall, something akin to what other big malls in Southern California charge.
Meanwhile, those who don't want to pay can make use of the expanding transit center just across the street or the numerous paseos that intersect that area.
Rather than build an expensive and unsightly new parking garage, Wal Mart at Town Center could be the catalyst that creates the SCV's first large scale pay-parking experiment. Wouldn't that be interesting, if not a little entertaining?
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Wal Mart at the Mall, Part 2
Over at The Signal, the consensus is that a Town Center mall Wal Mart could be the end of our 21 year old mall as we know it. The concerns center around two things: A WalMart doesn't fit the 'character' of the mall and parking would be terrible.
You see the former sentiment now and again in the SCV. Wal Mart, and other down-market retailers, don't fit in with x neighborhood or y shopping center. I think when people say this, they're saying more about how they want the SCV to be than what the SCV actually is. They have an aspirational view of Santa Clarita: they think of it as a smaller Irvine, or a more cozy Anaheim. You know, some place white and upper-middle class, a place trending more toward Nordstrom's than Penny's, more Tar-jay than Wal Mart.
The reality is that the SCV is positively lower and middle class, and any trends toward upper class were probably just fueled by debt during the real estate boom years. Think about furniture stores in the SCV: We're now +5 years since the Great Recession and one of the first things to go bust after the recession hit was high end furniture stores like Ethan Allen.
None of them have returned.
In the meantime, Wal Mart & Target continue to grow, expand, and succeed in the SCV. Even the $0.99 Cent store opened a second store in the SCV post-recession! Hell, the La-Z-Boy store on Pico Canyon is now a Goodwill, and a Goodwill took over another old furniture space on Soledad. And that dumpy K-Mart at Bouquet Junction somehow continues to hang on.
Sorry folks, but this is a Wal Mart community through and through. Sure, we may have an Apple Store (a development I admit thinking would usher in many other high-end retailers), but our mall is pretty standard and run-of-the-mill, with everything from a Macy's and Penny's to Gap, Sears and aggressive kiosk salespeople. It's certainly no Glendale Galleria or even Northridge Fashion Center, let alone the Westfield Topanga.
As for parking, if the Wal Mart goes in, there will be an increase in demand for parking. It's not possible to build more land and the existing lots are already at or near capacity, so supply is limited. When you have a scarce resource that's in high demand, it's only logical to start charging people for it. What's more, we have a captive audience in the SCV, there is no other mall to go to, no one for Westfield to compete with at least in our valley. So, I think people would pay a reasonable $3 per day fee to park close to the mall, something akin to what other big malls in Southern California charge.
Meanwhile, those who don't want to pay can make use of the expanding transit center just across the street or the numerous paseos that intersect that area.
Rather than build an expensive and unsightly new parking garage, Wal Mart at Town Center could be the catalyst that creates the SCV's first large scale pay-parking experiment. Wouldn't that be interesting, if not a little entertaining?
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