Here comes the storm! That would be Category 5 of the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. This award will go to the nominee Swamplot readers consider to be Walmart of the Year.
You’ve got 4 votes to spend in this category: You can cast one of them in a comment at the bottom of this post, another in an email to Swamplot, another from Twitter, and another on the wall of Swamplot’s Facebook fan page. (All the rules for voting are spelled out here.) If you want to help your favorite candidate win, start a campaign! The voting ends for this and all categories of the 2010 Swampies at 5 pm on Monday, December 27th.
The official nominees for the 2010 Walmart of the Year are . . .
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1. Dunvale Walmart Supercenter, Store #2066, 2727 Dunvale Rd. at Westheimer “The lines are ridiculous. But I do have to give them kudos for really cleaning up their act. It’s actually quite decent now. I no longer fear going there after dark.”
2. Pearland Walmart Supercenter, Store #872, 1919 N. Main St., Pearland. “Should be in the running because they actually did some good in the neighborhood. They vacated their small original store on one side of Hwy. 35 and moved into the larger already vacated Kmart storefront on the opposite side of the road. In turn, the Pearland Independent School District moved into the smaller empty Walmart site. Win-win. No haters out there.”
3. Angleton Walmart Supercenter, Store #527, 1801 N. Velasco St. “For the sheer grotesque joy to be had people-watching.â€
4. Crosby Walmart Supercenter, Store #522, 14215 FM 2100. “The upgraded Walmart in Crosby from a few years back was a good addition too. It helped anchor a whole new strip center next door, bringing in some good tax revenue to a small town. It looks like they were finally able to get someone to anchor the old strip center — which is always the difficult part of a Walmart upgrade.”
5. Supermercado de Walmart, 7960 Long Point, Spring Branch. “The first of its kind. All those bright colors. Now your groceries are available in Spanish!â€
6. Northline Commons Walmart, Store #4526, 4412 North Fwy. at Crosstimbers. “Opened just a few months ago, with a juice bar and ice-cream counter inside, and it’s real close to the Heights! Makes the Sawyer Heights Target a little less crazy.”
7. Washington Heights Walmart, Yale St. at Koehler, West End. “Hasn’t even been built yet, but already it’s made quite an impression. If this Walmart hadn’t caused such a kerfuffle, we wouldn’t even have had this award category — right? The mere thought of it opening has exposed all kinds of issues with how development in our city takes place and the attitudes of our elected officials (and what they talk about in their emails to each other). But even if this Walmart does get built as planned, it will still be the best — for the way it opened a lot of people’s eyes.â€
8. Meyer Park Walmart, Store #2718, 9555 S. Post Oak Rd. “Scene of the famous case of former TSU student Nitra Gipson, who was arrested and held for 2 days in jail after the manager of the Meyer Park Walmart accused her of trying to pay for merchandise with counterfeit money orders. After the local DA office later declined to press charges, Walmart lawyers sent Gipson a letter demanding she pay the company $200 or they’d charge her with shoplifting. The money orders, it turns out, had been purchased at a Walmart. This past March, almost 2 years after the incident, a Harris County jury ordered Wal-Mart Stores Texas to pay Gipson $9 million in damages for defamation. The company reportedly plans to appeal.”
9. Walmart Distribution Center, Cedar Crossing Industrial Park, Baytown. “Walmart’s absolutely humongous 4,000,000-sq.-ft. distribution center on 235 acres near Galveston Bay is the company’s biggest ever. You could fit 4 of those Katy Rooms To Go I-10 warehouses inside! The buildings are actually owned by the Texas General Land Office’s Permanent School Fund, which means the rent Walmart is paying goes to buy all those cleverly edited Texas textbooks.â€
All right, Walmart shoppers! Which one of these fine nominees deserves to be declared Walmart of the Year?
- How To Vote in the 2010 Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate [Swamplot]
- Swamplot Awards Ballots 2010 [Swamplot]
Photos: Aaron Carpenter (Dunvale, Pearland, Angleton, Northline, Meyer Park), Wikimedia Commons (Supermercado), Cushman and Wakefield (Cedar Crossing). Rendering and site plan: Moody Rambin Retail
#6 Northline used to be nothing and now it look great and new rumors of burlington coat factory opening this will be great for that area
#7. The best of the worst.
#3
I’m going to vote for #9. While I can’t vouch for having visited all of them, it appears that the 4,000,000 sq ft WallAwesome extravaganza has a lake around part of it. I appreciate their attempt to beautify such a suburban location, not to mention providing green attributes. Can you imagine if they brought this feature to the standard SuperCenter? You could go shop while the kids swam in the lake, rented a pedal-powered swan boat, or fished for blue-gill and small mouth bass. Is there still time to present this idea to the Heights commission?
The Baytown/Cedar Crossing distribution complex gets my vote. It is a site to behold of a sort entirely different from peopleofwalmart.com
#7 – West End Walmart for all the entertainment provided to the Swamploters.
#9
#1 for its former nastiness.
#7 by far. It brought out everyone’s true colors in this heated debate.
7. Heights Walmart for showing that Houston is not completely made up of a bunch of suburbanite drones that have been beaten into sprawl submission by planned communities and feeder road big box developments. Walmart has grotesquely overplayed its hand in Houston. Three stores within a five mile radius is just crazy (Heights, Crosstimbers and Silber). And the land cost for the Heights store is astronimical (could be $50+ per sq ft if the cost of adjacent right of way acquisition is an indicator). Walmart won’t break even for over a decade, if ever, even with 6 mil from the City. Instead, it is just a power play against a very successful Target down the street. If you can’t beat ’em, dillute their marketshare. But the good news is that this has mobilized residents and put future big box developers on notice that life will be very difficult for them if they take suburban sprawl and transplant it to urban areas. They Heights needs a Walmart as much as Cinco Ranch needs a Historic District.
7. Old School said it best.
9
I was doing okay until i got to “…like Cinco Ranch needs a Historic District”. Thats when i spit beer out my nose. Incredibly funny and sadly correct.
Is there a None Of The Above option?
#9… somewhere in the same area is the old US Steel plant…. which I think is now owned by a firm from India. Nice to be able to store all those Chinese and Indian made goods in the same neighborhood.
#3, easy. Angleton’s finest, all gathered in one easy to ogle location.
I think Brad hit it on the head…
Write-in vote:
#10 None of the above
A vote for not legitimizing that which is evil.
#10 – None of the above (with a nod to Old School’s take on #7).
#9 – Although I think it is an oversight that the Walmart on SH146 south of the Kemah bridge is not a nominee. The white trash spectacular at this location is something to behold.
I may have to rescind my nomination for the Dunvale Walmart, after last night nearly running over someone who tripped and landed spread-eagle in the middle of Westheimer as she was fleeing store security.
I do nominate #7 for Biggest Tempest in a Teapot, though.
Wal-Mart is gross…I abstain from voting, just like I abstain from shopping there.
#5
I don’t do drive-thru. Why would I do Wal-Mart? Who came up with these two categories?
2
Because they got *something* right.
I’d say #5 (the Supermercado). It exposes the emptiness of the purported “argument” in favor of the West End Wal-Mart which consisted of something like “oh, will no one think of the poor hispanics!” Well, guess what, a store that caters mostly to hispanics looks like #5, which the west end wal-mart will most assuredly NOT look like.