[LINK] "Wal-Mart: It Came, It Conquered, Now It's Packing Up and Leaving"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg Business' Shannon Pettypiece writes about how Wal-Mart's withdrawal from small centres in the United States is now leaving this places without retail, as Wal-Mart's entry undermined local competitors.

The Town’n Country grocery in Oriental, North Carolina, a local fixture for 44 years, closed its doors in October after a Wal-Mart store opened for business. Now, three months later -- and less than two years after Wal-Mart arrived -- the retail giant is pulling up stakes, leaving the community with no grocery store and no pharmacy.

Though mom-and-pop stores have steadily disappeared across the American landscape over the past three decades as the mega chain methodically expanded, there was at least always a Wal-Mart left behind to replace them. Now the Wal-Marts are disappearing, too.

“I was devastated when I found out. We had a pharmacy and a perfectly satisfactory grocery store. Maybe Wal-Mart sold apples for a nickel less,” said Barb Venturi, mayor pro tem for Oriental, with a population of about 900. “If you take into account what no longer having a grocery store does to property values here, it is a significant impact for us.”

Oriental is hardly alone. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said on Jan. 15 it would be closing all 102 of its smaller Express stores, many in isolated towns, to focus on its supercenters and mid-sized Neighborhood Markets. The move, which will begin by the end of the month, was a relatively quick about-face. As recently as 2014, Wal-Mart was touting the solid performance of its smaller stores and announced plans to open an additional 90.

That’s a big problem for small towns, often with proportionately large elderly populations. For the older folks of Oriental -- a retirement and summer vacation town along the Intracoastal Waterway -- the next-nearest grocery and pharmacy is a 50-minute round-trip drive.