As mentioned, Walmart Chicago is closing all locations, more than likely due to theft, like Portland. If you ask me, I’d say rip up the buildings and parking lots and put a lot of flats or bus stations or something as a replacement.
Is retail theft that bad in the US?
In some areas of some cities, yes. But that’s not entirely what’s at issue here (though this is what many companies will claim).
Some US cities are dealing with opiod and homelessness crises which are on a scale that most cities have never faced. The complete lack of a social safety net is creating areas that are, for lack of a better word, overrun. Those areas are functionally devoid of commerical activity.
I want to be clear that the fault of those who are homeless and those who are suffering from addiction lies predominately with the government and shitty policies enacted over the last 50 years. With that said, it is understandable that people are only going to be in spaces with a lot of homeless if they are 1) homeless themselves, 2) helping the homeless in a humanitarian capacity or 3) harassing the homeless (talking about cops here).
Combine all of that, and you have areas of cities where customers aren’t going to go (because they don’t feel safe) and that have a higher proportion of crime (due to the lack of priority of law enforcement).
I’ve left the US, by my home town (city) has areas that are just no-go zones. Like, you only go there if you’re desperate. And the McDonald’s in that areas has long shuttered because they weren’t making any money and they were dealing with a bunch of issues caused by vandalism and attacks on their employees.
The US is showing what happens if you have no social safety net.
Yea, it’s not that bad here, but the mess of the other big cities has leaked over to our area, mostly because the government is not willing to do anything with the issue and has pushed it to smaller towns who don’t have the ability/nor probably want to deal with all of this plus their own issues on top of it.
It’s honestly sad how bad things have gotten.
Might be a cool idea to convert some of those large buildings into indoor farmers markets, and have the parking lots be flea markets or whatever.
I don’t know what the landscape looks like in Chicago for WalMarts, but poking at Google Maps shows there’s potentially 9 to 10 Supercenters on the chopping block. Each one is around 10-11 acres in surface area, including the parking moat.
OP’s got the right idea. All of these should be replaced with a no setback, no surface parking, underground only parking like Europe’s been using for modern construction, mixed use high density housing and stores neighborhood. Compared to money pit the WalMarts are for the city, turning them into real density would help Chicago keep the suburbs growing. None of the WalMarts are downtown, of course, but they’re usually already next to roads with at least bus transit stops, and by making them into serious 4-5 story housing blocks with no parking moats around them they’d quickly become candidates for streetcar or metro line nodes.
This is a real opportunity for Chicago to improve city land use. Every big box store that closes should be converted to a dense mixed-use walkable neighborhood if cities want to start reclaiming their land for people instead of cars.
