It's thumbs up for N. J. site; Wal-Mart gets planning board approval for 1st store

Discount Store News, August 20, 1990

It's Thumbs Up for N.J. Site

TURNERSVILLE, N.J. - Wal-Mart has gotten planning board approval for its first store in New Jersey, DSN has learned.

As DSN reported last September, the first Wal-Mart stores in the Northeast will be in Pennsylvania. Wal-Mart is targeting Oct. 1 as the date for opening in York, Pa., its first of 10 Pennsylvania stores.

The New Jersey store will be in the new Cross Keys Commons shopping center under construction near the Atlantic City Expressway. The center is about 35 miles southwest of Philadelphia and some 40 miles northwest of Atlantic City. Wal-Mart got approval for a 114,000-square-foot store, its urban store prototype size.

Two department stores, one with 70,000 square feet and the other with 50,000 square feet were to occupy the site. Ames was to take the larger store, but its bankruptcy took it out of the picture.

Wal-Mart has yet to apply for a building permit, so not even a starting date for construction, much less a completion date, is available.

Both Wal-Mart and the developer, American Continental Properties declined to comment on Wal-Mart's further expansion into the Northeast.

DSN has yet to confirm other New Jersey sites, but Wal-Mart never enters a state with plans for just a single store.

Wal-Mart's first Northeast store, in York, Pa., is in the York Mall. The first Sam's in Pennsylvania, in the same mall, is set to open Oct. 15.

Wal-Mart also plans to build units in the state capital, Harrisburg, where a Sam's also will go in side by side, Philadelphia (three units), Gettysburg, Bloomsburg, State College, home of Penn State University, and Meadville.

Wal-Mart began its march into the Northeast last November by opening its first Sam's in Delran, N.J., part of the Greater Philadelphia market. It opened the second Sam's in November outside Atlantic City.

Over the next two years, Wal-Mart plans to open 16 more Sam's in the Northeast: seven in Pennsylvania, Allentown, Harrisburg, Johnstown, Lancaster, Reading, Wilkes-Barre and York; six in New York, Albany, Binghamton, Poughkeepsie, Rochester, Syracuse and Utica; and units in Wilmington, Del., Portsmouth N.H., and Portland, Maine.

Wal-Mart operates 1,477 stores and more than 125 Sam's Wholesale Clubs.