It’s official: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is not coming to the Westfield Valencia Town Center. The Bentonville, Ark. retailer has quietly stepped away from plans to build one of its neighborhood market groceries at the shopping center. Now, mall owner Westfield Group LLC of Australia is signing up other retailers for the space at the Shops at the Patios, an upscale addition to the mall that opened in 2010 and includes Michael Kors and Lorna Jane shops. Wal-Mart had been considering going into a 30,000-square-foot space that now will be divided up among different shops, said Stacie House, the mall’s marketing director. The first tenant, fashion accessory retailer Charming Charlie Inc. of Houston, already moved in this summer at a corner lot in the Patios. And just this month, Lyfe Kitchen, a Chicago-based quick-service food chain, agreed to come to the mall. “We’ve welcomed in some great retailers,” House said. The lease signings are a significant change from the planned Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, which features groceries and general merchandise but are much smaller than the company’s typical discount stores. Still, the grocery would likely have drawn tremendous traffic to the 1.1 million-square-foot mall. Westfield, when it still anticipated Wal-Mart tenancy, went before the Santa Clarita Planning Commission last year to request a redesigned car entry along the mall entrance. Rachel Wall, senior manager of community affairs at Wal-Mart, would not comment on the Valencia mall decision. “We do not have plans for a store at the Valencia Town Center, however we are always looking for opportunities to better serve our customers closer to where they live or work,” she said in an email. Wal-Mart already operates two superstores in Santa Clarita and a smaller location in nearby Stevenson Ranch. But as it tries to further penetrate the Los Angeles County market, it has faced continued opposition , especially from the grocery workers’ union that fears its low prices will put traditional supermarkets out of business. A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered Burbank to rescind previously granted permits for the retailer to open a 143,000-square-foot store and grocery at the site of a former Great Indoors furniture store. And it faced legal opposition to open a Neighborhood Market in Chinatown, but finally did so in September. But the retailer has been welcomed in other communities. This summer, it announced plans to open a Neighborhood Market in Simi Valley, a community where it already has two discount stores.
It’s Plan B at Valencia Mall Without Wal-Mart
