Wal-Mart, Syms Air Property Trade-Off

Bentonville, AR-based Wal-Mart spokeswoman Daphne Davis Moore says permit applications have just gone into Dallas planning offices. Wal-Mart and Syms won't be sitting down at the closing table unless a vital rezoning is OK'd by Dallas. The first possible date for a zoning hearing would be June 6. Moore says it could be 10 months or more before ground breaks, if all is smooth sailing.

Allen Brailsford of Secaucus, NJ-based Syms tells GlobeSt.com that the discount retailer has been a mainstay at the high-traffic corner since 1987. He says the trade-off talks started as a mutual idea. "We have a lot more area there than we need," he says. The existing 45,000-sf Syms store sits on five acres and it's destined for a wrecking ball if Wal-Mart gets to buy the site.

Sam Walton's group intends to use the acreage near Love Field for an innovative "urban infill" versioning of the usual 200,000-plus sf Supercenter. The bottom-line cost is "in the millions," Moore explains. Because the tract is half the size of a typical Supercenter site, the design, by Middough Associates Inc. of Cleveland, will be wrapped around street-level parking and an upper-level store. The end result is a two-story center situated closer to the street. Escalators wide enough for shopping carts will be part of the "new look" that includes a new facade better suited to the persona of the neighborhood, just west of Park Cities.

All, says Moore, is still preliminary, but is high on the "to do" list to get in-town consumers closer to Wal-Mart's doors. Its shoppers simply are commuting too far to suit the nation's leading discount retailer.

Wal-Mart has sweetened the plan for city approval, estimating 500 jobs and an annual payroll of $6.5 million will result. Sales taxes are projected to generate another $5 million for state and local coffers while property taxes are pegged at $400,000 annually.

Wal-Mart is playing it smart this time around by holding meetings with area neighborhood groups. In the past year, the retail king has had a tough time in many of Dallas' suburban markets. The urban center would feature a 12-foot landscaped buffer wall along portions of the east and west sides and traffic-flow changes in a strategy to be a "good neighbor.