The retail giant is moving into Ram country.
The world’s largest retailer is going small at VCU.
Walmart has leased space from the VCU Real Estate Foundation for a 4,100-square-foot store at 912 W. Grace St.
The store will be on the ground floor of a seven-story, $15.2 million office and classroom building that is currently under construction.
The planned store is part of a new Walmart program called Walmart on Campus. It’s a small store concept that has been rolled out so far to four college campuses between Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia and Missouri. VCU’s store will hire about 10 employees, according to Walmart.
“It’s a smaller format store that offers really quick and convenient shopping,” Walmart spokesperson Amanda Henneberg said. “You’ll see some university gear, you’ll see some school supplies, you’ll see those kinds of things that students would need in their everyday shopping trips.”
VCU said the store would look to open in late 2014 or early 2015. It will hire about 10 employees, according to Walmart.
The Walmart on Campus will fill the ground floor of the upcoming VCU building at 912 Grace St.
The VCU store will be the first and so far only planned branch of Walmart on Campus in Virginia. Diane Reynolds, VCU’s assistant vice president for business services, said the school reached out to the retail chain after hearing about a Walmart on Campus that opened at Georgia Tech last year.
“We have similar dynamics in terms of our campus,” Reynolds said. “They’re urban, we’re urban. They want to grow retail on campus, we do too.”
Walmart will run into some competition at peddling VCU gear and school supplies at its Grace Street location. Bookholders sells VCU-branded apparel just two blocks east on Grace Street. Barnes & Noble offers similar products in a large Broad Street store on the same block as Walmart.
Reynolds said the Walmart will aim for a different piece of the market than the campus’s official Barnes & Noble bookstore. Instead of a full-service apparel outlet, she said the Walmart is a place students might drop in to grab a cheap yellow-and-black tee on the way to a basketball game.
“Walmart will have a very small selection – they might carry two or three $10 T-shirts and one or two baseball caps,” she said. “It’s not going to be the depth and breadth, it’ll be fairly simple.”
The campus location adds to Walmart’s recent binge of expansion into Richmond. The retailer opened a new store in Reynolds Crossing earlier this year and has at least three of its Neighborhood Market concept stores planned for the region.
Local developer Phil Roper is in charge of building the tower where Walmart will set up shop. The VCU Real Estate Foundation is financing the project and owns the property.
The Walmart deal is also the latest in a run of real estate projects along the West Grace Street corridor. Next door to Walmart’s building, Roper and fellow developer George Emerson will soon open a $20 million apartment project at 900 W. Grace St. The developers own that property and are in process of preleasing the building.
Reynolds said Wednesday that a Panda Express restaurant will take the first floor retail space in the apartment building.
All told there is more than $100 million in planned construction for a six-block stretch of Grace Street near the school’s Monroe Park campus, including hundreds of new apartments, classroom and office space.
Reynolds said she hopes that Walmart will further spur the retail scene on Grace Street, a campus-fed location she said businesses may shy away from for fear of sluggish summer sales when students head home.
“I hope Walmart will attract other business that may say ‘If they’re going down there, then they must believe they can be successful,’” she said.
The retail giant is moving into Ram country.
The world’s largest retailer is going small at VCU.
Walmart has leased space from the VCU Real Estate Foundation for a 4,100-square-foot store at 912 W. Grace St.
The store will be on the ground floor of a seven-story, $15.2 million office and classroom building that is currently under construction.
The planned store is part of a new Walmart program called Walmart on Campus. It’s a small store concept that has been rolled out so far to four college campuses between Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia and Missouri. VCU’s store will hire about 10 employees, according to Walmart.
“It’s a smaller format store that offers really quick and convenient shopping,” Walmart spokesperson Amanda Henneberg said. “You’ll see some university gear, you’ll see some school supplies, you’ll see those kinds of things that students would need in their everyday shopping trips.”
VCU said the store would look to open in late 2014 or early 2015. It will hire about 10 employees, according to Walmart.
The Walmart on Campus will fill the ground floor of the upcoming VCU building at 912 Grace St.
The VCU store will be the first and so far only planned branch of Walmart on Campus in Virginia. Diane Reynolds, VCU’s assistant vice president for business services, said the school reached out to the retail chain after hearing about a Walmart on Campus that opened at Georgia Tech last year.
“We have similar dynamics in terms of our campus,” Reynolds said. “They’re urban, we’re urban. They want to grow retail on campus, we do too.”
Walmart will run into some competition at peddling VCU gear and school supplies at its Grace Street location. Bookholders sells VCU-branded apparel just two blocks east on Grace Street. Barnes & Noble offers similar products in a large Broad Street store on the same block as Walmart.
Reynolds said the Walmart will aim for a different piece of the market than the campus’s official Barnes & Noble bookstore. Instead of a full-service apparel outlet, she said the Walmart is a place students might drop in to grab a cheap yellow-and-black tee on the way to a basketball game.
“Walmart will have a very small selection – they might carry two or three $10 T-shirts and one or two baseball caps,” she said. “It’s not going to be the depth and breadth, it’ll be fairly simple.”
The campus location adds to Walmart’s recent binge of expansion into Richmond. The retailer opened a new store in Reynolds Crossing earlier this year and has at least three of its Neighborhood Market concept stores planned for the region.
Local developer Phil Roper is in charge of building the tower where Walmart will set up shop. The VCU Real Estate Foundation is financing the project and owns the property.
The Walmart deal is also the latest in a run of real estate projects along the West Grace Street corridor. Next door to Walmart’s building, Roper and fellow developer George Emerson will soon open a $20 million apartment project at 900 W. Grace St. The developers own that property and are in process of preleasing the building.
Reynolds said Wednesday that a Panda Express restaurant will take the first floor retail space in the apartment building.
All told there is more than $100 million in planned construction for a six-block stretch of Grace Street near the school’s Monroe Park campus, including hundreds of new apartments, classroom and office space.
Reynolds said she hopes that Walmart will further spur the retail scene on Grace Street, a campus-fed location she said businesses may shy away from for fear of sluggish summer sales when students head home.
“I hope Walmart will attract other business that may say ‘If they’re going down there, then they must believe they can be successful,’” she said.