Little Rock, Ark. – Wal- Mart Stores Inc. announced Monday its plans for nine stores in areas in need of economic revitalization and said it will use those stores to help other businesses in the areas develop.
Wal-Mart vice chairman John Menzer, who heads the company’s U.S. operation, was traveling to Indianapolis and Pittsburgh to announce that the company is moving into neighborhoods in each of those cities where commerce has faltered.
Menzer said Wal-Mart is working with local chambers of commerce, business groups and minority-owned businesses with the goal of guiding new suppliers and helping new or existing shops thrive.
“We’re looking at working families that need us the most,” Menzer said. “That’s where we want to go.”
As jobs are created around the new Wal-Mart stores, tax revenue will rise and the neighborhood economy will improve, Menzer said.
Two of the stores are already open – in Chicago and Portsmouth, Va.
Last April, Wal-Mart chief executive Lee Scott said the company planned to build 50 stores in areas with high crime or high unemployment. At the store on Chicago’s West Side and at the nine identified Monday, Wal-Mart will offer advertising to the other businesses in local newspapers and through the audio feed in Wal-Mart stores.
At each of the stores, five small businesses will be picked each quarter for the special treatment, the ultimate focus of which will be “how to take advantage of having a Wal- Mart in your market,” Menzer said.
Near the Chicago store – the first in the city limits for the retail giant – Menzer said a number of new businesses are under development nearby, including a coffee shop, a drugstore and a home-improvement center.
“It could be any type of small business in the area that would draw on our traffic,” he said.
