Wal-Mart working on its biggest-ever US store in Albany
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - The capital of New York state will soon be home to the nation's largest Wal-Mart store.
Workers are combining a standard-sized Wal-Mart store with space left vacant by a failed Sam's Club warehouse outlet on the outskirts of Albany.
When the project is completed, it will create a 260,000-square-foot, two-story "supercenter" with escalators that can transport shoppers and shopping carts. The expanded business will sell department store merchandise as well as groceries, liquor and automotive services.
A spokesman for the Arkansas-based company says that's more than 25 percent bigger than the average Wal-Mart supercenter, which typically measures just over 200,000 square feet.
The store plans to celebrate its grand opening in May.
Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer with more than 7,000 stores in the United States and overseas.
WOW...they will get this beast up and running by May. And just think NYS will have the largest Wal-Mart in the country!! Only in New York, huh? The twin towers go down, the Spitzer scandal, Paterson's affair, high taxes....AND NOW...A really super Wal-Mart!!!! God bless us one and all, huh?
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
ALBANY Local Wal-Mart supercenter will be nation’s biggest BY RICHARD RICHTMYER The Associated Press
Upstate New York will soon be home to the nation’s largest Wal-Mart store. Workers are combining a standard-sized Wal-Mart store with space left vacant by a failed Sam’s Club warehouse outlet on the outskirts of Albany to create a 260,000-square-foot, two-story “supercenter” selling department store merchandise as well as groceries, liquor and automotive and other services. That’s more than 25 percent bigger than the average Wal-Mart supercenter, which typically measures around 205,000 square feet, said Phil Serghini, a Wal-Mart spokesman in New York. Real estate planners at the Bentonville, Ark.-based company — the world’s largest retailer with more than 4,100 stores in the United States and 3,100 more overseas — never set out to build their biggest store in New York’s Capital Region. In fact, the larger stores tend to be built in rural areas, Serghini said. In the 1990s, Wal-Mart co-located a Sam’s Club — its members-only warehouse store — with a Wal-Mart department store in a dual-level shopping center, with the Sam’s Club on the lower floor. The company closed the Sam’s Club in 2006 because of low membership and decided to use that space to turn the department store into a supercenter. “It’s the largest one really only because of the situation involving the former Sam’s Club,” Serghini said. “But it is unique, and the customers are going to be very pleased with the layout.” The company had kept the project relatively quiet, not formally announcing it to the news media or to customers. Construction started about a year ago, but the transformation only recently became visible when workers opened up the newly renovated bottom floor and installed escalators. “I didn’t even realize anything was happening over here until I came back from winter break and all of a sudden there was a big hole in the floor,” said Susannah Coon, a student at a nearby university who has shopped there since she started classes three years ago. Denise Clow, who lives in suburban Albany and said she has shopped at the store since it opened, was particularly impressed by the escalators, which move both people and shopping carts. A hook grabs the bottom of the cart, which is then pulled along a track in the center of the escalator alongside the shopper riding the moving stairs. “That’s so cool,” she said. Aside from the newfangled escalators and wider aisles, the nation’s biggest Wal-Mart won’t be all that different from the rest. It will have the same kind of merchandise and services that are available at other supercenters, Serghini said. The store plans to celebrate its grand opening in May. TIM ROSKE/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS An escalator carries shoppers between two levels of the Wal-Mart store undergoing expansion in Albany on Tuesday. Workers are combining a standard-sized Wal-Mart with space left vacant by a failed Sam’s Club warehouse to create a 260,000-square-foot, two-story supercenter that will become the nation’s largest Wal-Mart.
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