
At some point next year, the first of six Walmarts planned for D.C. will open at the corner of Georgia and Missouri Avenues NW. Among the many concerns critics of the store have had with its arrival to the city is what the stores will eventually look like. The mega-retailer, after all, is best known for big-box stores with acres of parking, not exactly the preferred development style for D.C.
This week, though, Walmart rolled out video renderings of four of the six planned stores—Georgia Avenue, Skyland, Fort Totten, and East Capitol Street, giving us a better sense of how the stores will fit into the city’s urban fabric. (The retailer had released images before, but the videos are a more accurate representation of what the stores will look and feel like.) As you can see in the video below for the Georgia Avenue location, the retailer has stuck to a more subdued urban design, going so far as to incorporate features like green roofs, historic imagery and bike racks.
Weirdly, the video shows only shadows shopping at Walmart, confirming our long-held belief that the zombie apocalypse—or something like it—will soon strike D.C. Also, the video renderings seem not to show neighboring retailers going out of business and employees being denied overtimes wages. Hmm.
The Post has the videos for the three other stores.
Martin Austermuhle