Wal-Mart to build in nearly empty Gwinnett plaza

This old K-mart shopping center now sits almost empty.
Photo from several years ago. when the theatre was still open.


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This has nothing to do about Decatur, I just thought it was a interesting story about Wal-Mart
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By Joel Anderson

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Green Corners Shopping Center once boasted a thriving Kmart and movie theater, followed by a large international farmer’s market, and then a smattering of smaller retail outlets.
Almost 30 years later, the once-popular plaza at Jimmy Carter Boulevard and Rockbridge Road is nearly empty and plagued by crime, which has created the rare opportunity for a Wal-Mart store to move into a neighborhood without resistance.

Wal-Mart plans to build a 151,000-square-foot shopping center on the site, a project that has united local officials, law enforcement officers and residents who are weary of the current eyesore.

“You can’t ask for a better opportunity to spur economic activity in an area that is sorely in need of it,” said Chuck Warbington, executive director of the Gwinnett Village CID, which worked with Wal-Mart on its plans. “People are embracing it.”

This is a welcome development for Wal-Mart, which often has been greeted with public apathy or opposition when it opens in a new area. When another Wal-Mart store was proposed in Gwinnett County, nearly 100 people came to Snellville City Hall to protest the plan. Council members approved that request 4-2 over the loud complaints of residents.

Wal-Mart had no such trouble with the Green Corners site at a county commissioners’ business meeting in early October. The commissioners unanimously approved the company’s request, and only one person voiced concerns about the proposal.

“It’s a market that we haven’t been serving as well as we want to,” said Glen Wilkins, a local Wal-Mart spokesman. “So it’s an opportunity to hopefully reinvigorate the community and help draw additional businesses in that area.”

Warbington said Wal-Mart started looking at sites four years ago but backed off when the economy drooped. The retailer renewed the search a year ago, bouncing ideas off the CID about a possible location.

The new store and a sprawling parking lot means much, if not all, of the strip mall will be torn down early next year. That will spell the end for a pair of nightclubs that have been the source of numerous complaints, authorities and residents say.
full story at ajc