A very compelling picture from Reddit - Somewhere in PA:

[Cooley Hurd]

http://www.reddit.com/r/AbandonedPorn

Location unknown, but I hope a Costco is nearby.

[CincyDem]

1. Unfortunately, there's probably a "NEW" Wal-Mart about half a mile away.

They're like locusts - they don't disappear, they just move on.

[Laelth]

3. Precisely.

And, because they don't want any competition, they refuse to lease or sell an older building like that. They hold onto it, and it becomes a blight. They just pass the costs of keeping the old building on to their customers through those "low, low, prices."

-Laelth

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

13. What the hell are you talking about? Wal-Mart's realty operation is enormous.

http://www.walmartrealty.com/Listings/

You too can own your very own wal-mart non-supercenter.

[Laelth]

15. They may list their old, abandoned properties.

But, in my experience, they rarely sell them.

-Laelth

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

18. Well, yeah... except when they actually do.

Big Lots, arguably a Wal-Mart competitor has secured a bunch of former Wal-Mart locations.

Wal-Mart Realty is a stand-alone business that is expected to perform.

[SoCalDem]

17. That's what they did with one of ours..

They set up shop about 1/2 mile from Target in a butt-ugly concrete block building, and now have built an even Bigger/Uglier one not a mile away..left the other one abandoned. because of the quirky way our town incorporated all those years back, it could be that they moved just across a "line"..

Big boxes do this all the time.. They arrive with pocketsful of promises for jobs jobs jobs... BUT the rub is this.. they demand upfront, promises to get "variances..tax holidays..etc" in exchange for bringing in all those glorious jobs....and just as it comes time for them to start paying taxes, they up and move on to the next sucker.

The shitty jobs did materialize, but in exchange for the local businesses closed that routinely paid their taxes.. All but a few grocery stores in my town are gone..these were UNION stores.. they have been replaced by walmart & ethnic grocers (all non-union)

32 years ago we had Alpha-Beta, Safeway, 2 Ralphs, Vons Pavilion, Stater Brothers and a slew of smaller independent stores.. Now we have Fiesta/Cardenas/El Superior and 2 Stater Bros.. and of courst Walmart .. 2 of them..

[madaboutharry]

2. I think corporations like Wal-Mart should be forced to demolish the buildings they abandon.

This is a plight on the earth.

[arcane1]

6. And the parking lots too!! n/t

[rurallib]

9. or at least sell or maintain them

they have left a lot of blight like that around the country.

[montanacowboy]

4. This is what they did in our town

they had a perfectly beautiful building with great access right off the main road, Hwy 2 in town and they moved out to the new sprawling shopping center north of town and left this building shuttered up which left that end of town like a ghost town.

I hate these SOB's, I have never stepped foot in a Walmart.

[CrispyQ]

8. Same happened in our town.

It took five years before the old building was leased out. By then, many of the businesses in the area had gone belly up. Now, finally, that area is being built up again. Also, the city picked up most of the cost of adding an additional traffic light at the new location.

The parking lot at Walmart is always busy. Always. There are lots of expensive looking cars in it, too.

"Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price" - an excellent documentary that should be required viewing for America. It covers all aspects of the company's impact on our lives, including how it decimates small businesses, how it keeps it's employees from organizing, how they keep employee hours just low enough so they don't have to offer benefits, the working & living conditions of the factories in China. One fact that was interesting, was that Walmart sometimes has two production lines - one for the European product with the more stringent standard & the other for the American product with the lesser standard. Hey, we're number one!

Everyone should view this movie.

[nessa]

5. It looks like Dickson City...

They stupidly built to close to the rocks in the back.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/55999734@N00/3543761363/
and yes there is another one close by -- a Super Center.

[nessa]

7. and they stiffed the area for around a million bucks in taxes owed...

http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/mid-valley-board-oks-settlement-over-former-walmart-property-1.1273055

[quaker bill]

10. They almost never sell old stores

because they do not want competition using the space.

[eppur_se_muova]

11. Their tax holiday ended, they opened another store just outside city limits ?

Typical for Wal-Mart. They get a big tax bread to build a new store -- as soon as the tax break ends, they relocate outside the boundaries of the municipality that gave them the break (also squeezing a new tax break out of their new home if they can).

[Separation]

12. I know I'm gonna get a rash of shit for this.

But here goes...

While stationed in Kodiak Alaska the stores were all mom & pop shops. If you wanted to get a new set of tires it would be an exorbant and outrageous price. When you call them on their BS, they would say, "it's shipping costs", or my favorite, "take it or leave it where else you gonna get it?" It wasn't a matter of shipping, you could order off the Internet cheaper but had to wait a week to get whatever you needed.

Now enter the Walmart that the locals fought tooth & nail against. Finally we had access to goods at a reasonable price, some of the gouging shops rightfully went out of business. Walmart was one of the best things that happened to Kodiak other than the Taco Bell that opened, (I shit you not, the line when it opened was almost half a mile long).

Now, with that being said, now that I am back in the lower 48 our family avoids Walmart like the plague. We use mom & pop shops when we can, when we can't we order off the Internet.

/dons flame suit

[a la izquierda]

14. I know where that is.

It's near Scranton. My sister lives nearby.

[justanidea]

16. Thats Dickson City

There is a Wegmans next door and a newer Walmart supercenter about a half mile away.