The excavator in the distance, the pick-up trucks, and the port-a-potty can mean only one thing: Here comes the Idylwood Walmart. Last week, a construction trailer showed up on the north end of the 28-acre site near the Gulf Fwy. on Wayside. This week, the heavy equipment started rolling in, chomping on trash trees along the property’s fences and churning up dust to make way for the city’s second store inside the Loop. So far, though, this proposed 185,00 sq. footer doesn’t appear to have attracted the same scorn as its predecessor on Yale St.
Any plans to rebuild the Garden Ridge store at the northern border of The Woodlands on I-45 near Hwy. 242 — destroyed by fire today — will likely get careful scrutiny: “As one of the city’s ‘big box’ stores, Garden Ridge straddles the city limits between Conroe and The Woodlands Township. 
Reporting on the desires of several big-box retailers to shrink the size of their stores, David Kaplan notes 
This one’s to the north: 
Comment of the Day: Recreating Great Moments in Big Box History
“Ironically the glass facade is strikingly similar to a designed, but never built Great Indoors store prototype that was slated to open in 2004. The prototype coincided with the merger of Sears with Kmart when all new concept development (and gross profit) for Sears ceased. Pity.” [Hdtex, commenting on Great New Indoors Replacing The Old Great Indoors]