Its Shelves Empty, a Former Walmart Is Targeted for Reuse
Increasingly, these empty big boxes are being acquired by warehouse and fulfillment providers.
Heading to a Walmart to buy some supplies/? Look around, because you might be able to pick up part of your last-mile distribution real estate strategy.
For some years, Walmart has been closing some locations, which then go on sale. Increasingly, these empty big boxes are being acquired by warehouse and fulfillment providers.
“When you’re a retailer that big, it’s not unusual to evaluate the market,” Richard Abramson, co-chairman of both the real estate department and real estate special opportunities group at law firm Cole Schotz, tells GlobeSt.com. “Maybe they move to a different location in the market [because the old one] was under performing and they don’t want to invest in it as a retail store.”
Drop-shipping fulfillment service Completeful just purchased a former Walmart Supercenter in Lafayette, LA, according to the Acadiana Advocate. The building is in an Opportunity Zone, vacant for two years, and reportedly listed for $5.75 million.
But according to what Completeful CEO Josh Goree told GlobeSt.com, the final price was $3 million. The 228,000 square foot spot will allow the company to consolidate operations from three buildings into one.
“I knew it was available because our current space is only a mile down the road and I passed it every day,” Goree says. “I actually used to sit in the parking lot and imagine that one day we would be in it. Empty space is huge for us to be able to build our workflow, but the power the building has is the most exciting thing because we have a lot of machinery and we’ve currently maxed the power available at each of our facilities. With the extra space and power, we should be able to lower prices across the board, ramp up more volume with current products, and expand into a few new product areas. The Walmart building was the perfect space.”
These discarded buildings aren’t just in Cajun country. In 2020, a former Juneau, AL Walmart that had been empty since 2016 finally went on sale for $6 million, far under the city-assessed value of $8.3 million, according to television station KTOO. But things seem to have changed on the pricing front. Alaska Unlimited Realty currently shows the 122,278 square foot retail spot going for $9 million.
A 216,708 square foot South Carolina former Walmart is up for $5.4 million according to the CRE listing site CommercialCafe.