Tim McGarry can’t wait until Wal-Mart’s new supermarket on U.S. 1 opens in early 2017.
That’s because the Vero Beach city planning and development director says he won’t have to take a phone call practically every other day from a local woman who asks him. “When will the Neighborhood Market open?”
Vero Beach’s newest planned supermarket is on schedule to open early next year now that the giant Arkansas-based retailer has reached an agreement with Sonic, which shares the same parking lot, for U.S. 1 entrance and exit access.
The Vero Beach Planning and Zoning Board approved the new traffic pattern in and out of the former Albertsons supermarket parking lot. The approval calls for Wal-Mart to make sure that water runoff does not flow onto neighboring properties and to obtain a Florida Department of Transportation right-of-way permit, according to city documents.
Wal-Mart’s traffic engineers had to design a new traffic flow plan, McGarry said, because Florida Department of Transportation road access standards have changed since Albertsons shuttered its aging grocery store at 1750 U.S. 1 several years ago.
“The DOT didn’t allow them to use the old access point,” McGarry said. “[So] there’s a new access point” – the U.S. 1 turnoff that the Neighborhood Market will share with Sonic.
The new 43,595-square-foot Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market will put competitive pressure on two nearby Publix stores – one a few blocks away on U.S. 1 and another on the Miracle Mile stretch of 21st Street. The store will also pose a challenge for the Fresh Market on Miracle Mile.
“Wal-Mart Neighborhood Markets were designed . . . as a smaller-footprint option for communities in need of a pharmacy, affordable groceries and merchandise,” according to the corporate website. “Each one is approximately 40,000 square feet and employs up to 95 associates.”
The stores offer fresh produce, meat and dairy products, bakery and deli items, household supplies, health and beauty aids and a pharmacy.
The brand has been a winner for Wal-Mart since it was introduced in 1998. There were 682 Neighborhood Markets nationwide in August, up from 300 in 2014.
The Treasure Coast saw its first Neighborhood Market earlier this year when Wal-Mart opened a 44,000-square-foot, 95-employee market in St. Lucie West about seven months ago.
In a 2015 article online Business Insider reported that the stores, “which are one fifth of the size of Wal-Mart Supercenters, pose a major threat to traditional supermarkets like Whole Foods, Kroger, and Trader Joe’s, according to Moody’s analysts.
“[They] offer the same low prices as Wal-Mart’s giant warehouse stores, but in a much smaller and more easily accessible location, giving the Neighborhood Markets a ‘distinct competitive advantage over virtually anyone.’
“‘The advantages of the Neighborhood Market concept will be difficult to beat back,’ Moody’s Vice President Charles O’Shea said in a recent note to clients.”
Wal-Mart has a Super Center store on State Road 60 several miles to the west, but the new Neighborhood Market will likely pull a different demographic because it’s within shopping distance of island residents.
“I don’t think they put in this Neighborhood Market to compete against the other Wal-Mart store,” McGarry said. “There are beach people nearby” who can shop at the Neighborhood Market, he noted.
Wal-Mart has been looking at the old Albertsons site for more than a year.
The new store will be a key component in the continuing redevelopment of Vero’s U.S. 1 corridor, which includes a new Cumberland Farms store on the other side of 17th Street from the Neighborhood Market, a nearly complete Wawa gas station and restaurant and numerous other new restaurants and stores in expanded and redeveloped retail centers.
Real estate agent Billy Moss of Lambert Commercial Real Estate, who is an active deal-maker along U.S.1, said the Albertsons location was one of “the most looked-at corners in Vero Beach.” He noted other national retailers are located along U.S. 1 both north and south of the new Neighborhood Market location.
“They will get mainland traffic as well as beach traffic. If you go to 17th Street you can go across to A1A,” Moss said. “These Wal-Mart Neighborhood Markets that have opened in other markets have been very successful. And that location is fabulous.”
Wal-Mart runs more than 70 Neighborhood Markets in Florida, with one more coming soon.
