Opening of the store will mean the retail giant's return to eastern New Orleans after an absence of several years.
The New Orleans City Council gave its approval Thursday to plans for a Walmart Supercenter in eastern New Orleans, clearing the way for the return of the retail giant to that part of the city after an absence of several years. The store is planned for the former Lakeland Medical Center site at the southwest corner of Interstate 10 and Bullard Avenue.
The Walmart on Bundy Road failed to reopen after beind damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Chain officials have said the new Supercenter will be an upgrade from the Bundy store, as it will be larger and more accessible.
When plans for the 187,500-square-foot store were first announced last December, many eastern New Orleans residents hailed it as an answer to their long-standing call for more retail outlets in their part of the city.
"It's a great day for east New Orleans," Sylvia Scineaux-Richard, president of the Eastern New Orleans Neighborhood Advisory Commission, said at the time. "It's bringing economic development to our community and provides jobs for people who live here. It's long overdue."
The store could open by late 2013. Walmart also is planning a store in Gentilly.
James Percy, an attorney for Walmart, said the eastern New Orleans store will create 300 to 350 permanent jobs. Full-time hourly Walmart workers in Louisiana now average $12.41 an hour, he said.
Percy said the store also will have an "aesthetically pleasing and pedestrian-friendly environment."
The Lakeland Medical Center site, pictured here last December, will become home to a new Walmart Supercenter.
The council approved waivers to several regulations under the city's big-box retailer law and Eastern New Orleans Renaissance Corridor design rules. The waivers involved the number of parking spaces, the number and size of the store's signs, landscaping requirements and the height of a rear fence.
The council agreed to let the Walmart have 727 parking spaces, the same number approved a few weeks ago by the City Planning Commission, although 101 more than the commission's staff recommended. Percy said the chain normally wants 938 spaces for a Supercenter like the one planned for eastern New Orleans, but it agreed to reduce the number in this case.
The city's planners generally argue that big-box stores don't need as many parking spaces in New Orleans because many customers use public transportation and the parking lots sit vacant much of the year. Store executives, on the other hand, want to have enough spaces to accommodate all potential customers during peak shopping periods.
The City Council generally has gone along with developers and allowed major stores to have far more spaces than the planning staff recommended. The council this year agreed to let a 148,000-square-foot Costco warehouse store in the Carrollton area have 670 parking spaces, not the 499 spaces recommended by the Planning Commission.
In 2002, a nearly yearlong battle over plans for a Walmart store in the Lower Garden District ended with the City Council voting to throw out a long list of provisos planners wanted to impose on the project, such as limits on the amount of parking and requirements for the store's design, and substituting a list of conditions proposed by Walmart officials. Among other things, the council agreed to let the store have 825 parking spaces, about 325 more than the Planning Commission favored.