LH Press Library
Blaydes: Wal-Mart Will Drive Lake Highlands Redevelopment
Retail giant will bring much needed consumer traffic to Abrams - Forest
Lake Highlands People, by Peter Simek
November 11, 2005
On Wednesday, the city council voted on the re-zoning at the intersection of Abrams and Forest roads to make way for a new Wal-Mart Supercenter. A number of residents have been upset with the proposal, arguing that Wal-Mart and its notorious reputation for stifling local business, is the wrong kind of store for Lake Highlands.
But District 10 councilman Bill Blaydes has remained firm in his resolve to help bring the superstore to the area. We asked Mr. Blaydes why he thinks Wal-Mart is what Lake Highlands needs to turn around its local retail situation.
Resident opposition isn’t phasing you. Why are you so convinced that Wal Mart is right for the community?
Majority of the homeowners associations in District 10 say yes, in fact, the Town Creek Association just south of this [ say yes]. The most verbal are Forest Meadow Homeowners one and two because they are the closest to the proposed site.
This is the intersection of Forest Road and Abrams Road, for heaven’s sake, with frontage along the LBJ Freeway. The Dallas development code and the big box codes say that they fit along freeways because they are of regional use. This is sitting on a freeway with freeway access at a major intersection, across the street from a shopping center, not a residential development. A shopping center that has been there and operating for many years.
I rep. 85,000 people out there and the majority of those 85,000 people are saying ‘yes, it is the thing to do.” It is bringing retail trade back into the city; it will create enough taxes to hopefully relieve some of the property taxes in the area, and we feel like it will stimulate the economic development to get other retail trades to get back into the defunct shopping center across the street.
Some residents object to the kind and style of retail Wal-Mart brings, and they point to the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market and problems neighbors there have had with the stores upkeep as proof.
Well the complaints cleaned that place up considerably. They want to be a good neighbor, and we’re going to try to help them do that by being right on top of them with code.
They are going to be putting a new face on the front of the building, clean it up — making it more appealing. ... What they are attempting to put in [on Forest and Abrams] won’t look like your traditional Wal-Mart store.
It is a Supercenter but it is designed to look like the block face of an old downtown country square. It won’t be the blue and gray Wal-Mart store.
How do you respond to the traditional argument Wal-Mart discourages other retail from coming to the area?
Developers are combing the area looking for project proposals, and it all got started because of what’s being pushed with other retailers looking at the market.
I think the retailers that are going on other corners are different types of retailers.
They have a different style or quantity of product, and yet the bargain shoppers are still going to have a possibility — [it] may not be a dollar store ‘cause Wal Mart may run every dollar store in the place out of business. It’s not going to hurt my feelings.
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