Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to expand its 136,000-square-foot Franklin store at 6701 S. 27th St. by 66,000 square feet, transforming it into a supercenter store.
The Wal-Mart supercenter stores include a grocery section and an auto service area, in addition to the main Wal-Mart discount store. "We plan to substantially renovate and expand the building," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Lisa Nelson. "Our customers are demanding that we expand that store into a supercenter. Also, it is our current business model to expand our stores into supercenters." The expansion will create 240 new jobs at the store, about 60 percent of which will be full-time jobs, Nelson said.
The project still must be approved by Franklin officials. In 2004, Wal-Mart proposed a supercenter store east of West Loomis Road and Highway 100 in Franklin, but the company dropped those plans after facing strong opposition from residents. The latest Wal-Mart proposal doesn’t appear to be getting a strong reaction from the public, said Doug Wheaton, director of city development.
"There hasn’t been an enormous groundswell of opposition or support," Wheaton said. "It appears to be viewed by some people as not that big of a deal because they already have a store there. It’s already a fairly dense commercial area."
Wal-Mart still plans to expand its store at 3355 S. 27th St. in the City of Milwaukee from a regular discount store into a supercenter store, Nelson said. That project will be submitted soon for official review by aldermen, she said. The store is located about four miles north of the Franklin store.
Wal-Mart also wants to build two new stores in Kenosha County, one on the south side of Kenosha and another in the Town of Somers, northwest of Kenosha. The city rejected the proposed south side store, but the company’s lawyer is filing an appeal of that decision, Nelson said. The company wants to build the two proposed supercenter stores and close its current Kenosha store at 4404 52nd St.
