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Originally Posted by M1EK
Victory's not horrible. The best you can say about it is that if you were really predisposed to walk, you wouldn't mind walking there. But that's still the back entrance to the grocery store; meaning the grocery store is still prioritizing cars over pedestrians. (See also, Mueller HEB discussion).
This would be more understandable if, like with Fresh Plus vs. HEB, another example didn't already exist; in Wheatsville's case it's far less defensible - their other store already shows how to address the street so you don't treat pedestrians like second-class citizens!
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OK, fair enough regarding pedestrians. I think where we are in disagreement is based on your initial statement: (emphasis added)
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You can't be green if everybody has to drive to your store.
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People living on the east side of South Lamar on streets behind and/or adjacent to that center probably put a greater emphasis on having a relatively short, safe bike ride to get there, rather than having something cool to look at on their ride there, or whether or not they're accessing the store from the front or the rear. People who live farther away who don't really want to walk, (and don't have a bike) but wouldn't mind using public transportation probably place a greater emphasis on how far they have to walk from the store to the bus stop.
Every time I go to Target I see one or two of those red Target shopping carts at the 338 bus stop in front of the old Furr's. Target is twice as far away from that stop as Wheatsville will be. If people walk from that bus stop way over to Target, they'll walk from that stop to and from Wheatsville.
And if they're catching the 331, those stops on Victory are very close to the store entrance.
All this to say I think anyone who gets there by walking, biking, or using public transportation would qualify as a "green" customer, while people who drive their own cars would not.
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Anywhere on South Lamar further north, with the store addressing Lamar rather than a parking lot, would have been a big improvement.
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It would have been an improvement for pedestrians, but if you were on a bike would you really want to bike on S. Lamar to get there? I wouldn't - unless I could ride on the sidewalk.
Also, certain parts of Lamar further north have more of an incline to deal with. Going north is a breeze. You just coast down the hill. Going south, there are places where one might have to huff and puff their way up an incline if you're not in the best of shape like me. Prather, Panther and Victory are pretty much flat terrain.
At any rate, Wheatsville has a
page on their website about the new store (including a store map.) These are the reasons they give for picking that particular location in the Lamar Oaks Shopping Center.
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We chose this location for a lot of reasons:
People have been crying out for a South Wheatsville for decades!
We wanted a site that would be big enough to have all the features that our current store has, plus many things that we wish we had like: More parking, more indoor seating, larger fresh foods departments and more prepared foods.
It’s accessible by two bus routes (338 & 331) and is just a few blocks away from a USDA identified food desert where people have low access to fresh foods.
Our professional co-op market study identified this location as being an excellent choice with lots of potential for sales, visibility and accessibility.
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I can understand their pedestrian-friendly set-up on Guadalupe, because they
have more pedestrians up in that area. South Lamar between Panther Trail & Ben White isn't as dense as West Campus/UT, so we have fewer (for now.) That's probably why Wheatsville wanted more parking for their south location than they did for their original location.
I suspect other reasons they chose that location was their monthly rent (crappy shopping center = lower rent) and the fact that it's an existing building that will just have to be renovated, rather than having to wait for a new store to be built from scratch. They might have considered locations in some of the new developments being built further north on S. Lamar, but they might not have been able to get 22,000 contiguous square feet of space, and the closer to Riverside, the higher the rent would have been.
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