Despite the threat its Super Wal-Mart posed to its downtown shopping district, one Iowa town’s smart planning and resourcefulness has kept its local businesses alive.It is a bonus-sized understatement to say Al Norman, founder of the anti-big-box-store Web site Sprawl-busters.com, is a fierce opponent of Wal-Mart and all the American retail hulk represents.

He’s battled Wal-Mart for years and is particularly disturbed with the vacant stores the chain leaves in its wake when its Supercenters replace their smaller forerunners.

In Carroll, Iowa, the city is dealing with just that. One of the more compelling continuing stories in Carroll is the impact of  the Supercenter on the community.

While there are encouraging signs, it’s far too early for a verdict.

“You really want to look out a year and a half later,” Norman said in a phone interview from Massachusetts. “You can’t really tell anything after a few months.”

With the announcement last month by Badding Construction that it had plans for a dramatic redevelopment of the former Wal-Mart property in the central business district, the case can be made that Carroll (population 10,000 but a retail trade center for west-central Iowa) is adapting to the Supercenter as well as any small city in the United States.

“I think local developers who support local merchants are critical,” Norman said.

Many other communities are stuck with empty Wal-Marts and must work with developers with no local ties, Norman said.

Badding Construction officially took ownership of the former Wal-Mart property in June and has unveiled an ambitious plan for reshaping the 11-acre tract in the heart of Carroll’s commercial district.

The veteran construction firm negotiated the purchase of the land and building – which is now being called The Depot Business Center – prior to the retail Goliath’s March Supercenter opening in a recently annexed area of western Carroll.

“Our vision five years from now is that this is a development we’ll be just as proud of as one of the other facilities and projects we’ve been involved with in western Iowa,” said Badding Construction President Nick Badding.

Working with Urbandale-based architects, Badding has planned a remodeling of the 72,000-square-foot former Wal-Mart and the addition of three separate buildings – 5,000, 10,000 and 15,000 square feet – geared for retail, office and restaurant occupants.

“You’re fortunate that its 72,000 square feet because the very big stores are hard to move,” Norman said. “A 120,000-square-foot store, as you can imagine, is harder to fill.”

Ryan Horn, a spokesman for Wal-Mart in the Iowa region, says the company is making inroads on moving old property.

“We’re really making a lot of progress in terms of getting these buildings sold or sublet,” Horn said.

Wal-Mart owned the former Carroll site and was able to move it relatively quickly into Badding’s hands, Horn noted.

“I think that is a reflection of the fact that Carroll is a very vibrant business community,” Horn said.

One of the sites at the former Wal-Mart property, east of North West Street on a now grassy area between the former Wal-Mart lot and Westgate Mall parking, already is purchased by an undisclosed buyer.

Another lot, to the west of North West and south of Quiznos, is best suited for a restaurant because of the prime windshield spot, the high visibility right off U.S. 30. The firm has been in discussions with several restaurants about locating there.
Badding said his family’s business has been working with local, regional and national businesses for potential sitings in The Depot Center.

“We’ve been working very well with the chamber,” Badding said.

The final look of the facilities will depend on the occupants, as some chains have standard storefronts and signage, but the main building is laid out with an eye for five spaces for businesses or organizations, all of them having frontage.

Badding sees the development as a two- to five-year project.

He said marketing is “going well” and first tenants could be inked for the main building within a matter of months.

The western development, planned at 15,000 square feet, is set up for office space.
In terms of the broad-sweeping effects of the Supercenter development in Carroll, it is, as Norman said, too early too tell.

But at the Carroll Hy-Vee, Manager Randy Kruse is confident with his company’s approach to competing with Wal-Mart.

“We have felt the effects of it, but I think we have come through it so far well,” Kruse said. “Having said that, the battle is far from over. I think we’re putting up a great fight, and this is something we’ve been planning for two years.”

Kruse said he’s seeing weekend traffic at Hy-Vee increase as the newness factor, the pull of curiosity, wears off, and the Wal-Mart folds into the Carroll retail mix.

“We see our weekends getting stronger – and we see some new faces,” Kruse said.

One major advantage Carroll has over other cities with Wal-Marts is that the initial store was placed in the central business community – not on the outskirts of town where Wal-Mart is famous for siting new facilities.

“We still get calls, particularly from college students doing research, asking how we did that,” said Jim Gossett, executive director of the Carroll Area Development Corp.

Additionally, in the years before the Supercenter opening, Carroll worked aggressively on a Corridor of Commerce project to assist small businesses by providing more inviting atmospheres for customers in hopes of helping merchants lure people from Wal-Mart.

“Wal-Mart doesn’t serve everybody,” Horn said. “Wal-Mart doesn’t even serve a majority of people.”

Norman, who thinks Carroll should have fought the siting of Wal-Mart and sought to keep it from going to the edge of the community, acknowledges that the city has coped with Wal-Mart as well as any he’s encountered since he took on Wal-Mart in Greenfield, Mass., in 1993.

“Those two mistakes aside, yes, I think you’re right,” Norman said. “I wouldn’t be overjoyed that a Supercenter located on the edge of town, but I wouldn’t despair.”