Let’s say you’re Wal-Mart, and some community has the audacity to restrict your right to unfettered metasticizing by putting a cap on retail store size — say, 75,000 square feet, when they know well and good that your usual store size is 100,000 square feet. What to do?
Signaling what could be a new approach to getting around such restrictions, Wal-Mart will build adjacent stores in Dunkirk, Md. with one outlet being constructed so that it will be just under the 75,000 square-foot limit that is allowed by a Calvert County ordinance.
[…] Calvert County passed an ordinance in August limiting the size of commercial retail buildings to 75,000 square feet. Wal-Mart usually builds stores that range from at least 100,000 square feet to more than 200,000 square feet for Supercenters.
Wal-Mart proposed a 74,998-square-foot store in Dunkirk that will be next to a 22,689-square-foot garden center. The two stores would have their own entrances, utilities, bathrooms and cash registers.
Wal-Mart has faced backlash for trying to expand in certain areas, and local jurisdictions have passed measures like the one in Calvert County that limit the size of retail stores. Total square-footage of the store would exceed the limit by 30 percent.
You almost have to admire the fiendish cleverness of it all.
Of course, they’re the good guys in all this:
It is the first time Wal-Mart has considered such a measure, said Mia Masten, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman. “As these big-box bills come up, all retailers will just have to be flexible,” Masten said. “In this case, we developed a model that allowed us to reach our customers.”
Never mind that those customers, in the form of their elected county government, just told you they didn’t want that large a retail center there, split bathrooms or not.
(via J-Walk)