CARLSBAD: Wal-Mart drops building plans
Company won’t put upscale store in Carlsbad
By BARBARA HENRY – Staff Writer | Tuesday, May 27, 2008 8:15 PM PDT ∞
CARLSBAD —- The city was supposed to get the nicest Wal-Mart in the nation, a place with $100 bottles of wine. But it’s not going to happen.
Wal-Mart officials announced Tuesday afternoon that they have dropped their plans to build a small store at El Camino Real and College Boulevard. They’re planning to put the 17-acre site back on the market, they said.
John Mendez, spokesman for Wal-Mart’s Southern California region, said his company has decided to focus on building more of its supercenters —- giant discount stores that have full supermarkets as well as clothing and home goods. The proposal to build a small, upscale version of a Wal-Mart discount store doesn’t fit with that business model, he said.
There were other factors working against the Carlsbad proposal —- a recently troubled national economy, plus a less than enthusiastic welcome from city officials and neighboring property owners.
“In the long run, I think it’s a good thing,” Carlsbad Mayor Bud Lewis said Tuesday afternoon after meeting privately with Wal-Mart officials.
Lewis added that people who like to shop at the discount retailer already have plenty of local options because Wal-Mart has several stores in neighboring communities.
“We have said for a long time that those stores are good for other communities, but we didn’t want them,” Lewis said.
Carlsbad has long been North County’s least receptive spot for what are termed “big box” projects —- large, free-standing stores. The city has had its strict shopping-center zoning requirements in place since the early 1990s, when Price Club opened its huge warehouse-style structure on Palomar Airport Road. The construction of that store, which eventually became a Costco, divided the community and led to a requirement that large stores must be part of a shopping center complex rather than standing on their own.
That rule has essentially blocked any new giant stores from coming to town because there’s a shortage of appropriately zoned land for large shopping center complexes.
After word spread last fall that Wal-Mart had bought property in town, company leaders said they were envisioning a different sort of store for Carlsbad. One company official called it an “absolute paradigm shift,” saying it would look more like a high-end shopping center than a discount store.
City Planning Director Don Neu said city officials were surprised to hear Wal-Mart was dropping its plans, but said they had always known the project would be a difficult fit for the lot because of its zoning.
“I think from that perspective we felt it was going to be an uphill battle in terms of trying to make a Wal-Mart fit into that local shopping center zone,” he said.
The 17-acre site is zoned for something like the recently built Henry’s grocery store and other small shops at La Costa Avenue and Camino de los Coches, he said.
Though the company had met with the city’s planning department, no formal building plans were ever filed, Neu said, adding that he hopes whoever purchases the lot knows what they’re buying.
“Hopefully, whoever is looking at it will do some due diligence about what can be put on it,” he said.
Contact staff writer Barbara Henry at (760) 901-4072 or [email protected]. Comment at nctimes.com.
