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Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Meijer and Wal-mart not so super in Niles

I was in the new Meijer supercenter in Niles, just a short distance from me.  It’s huge (over 100,000 square feet, in a site formerly used by a Kmart, Builders Square, and a couple of other failed formats), but had a lot less general merchandise than I expected.  It’s mostly food.

 

This evidently is intentional. Meijer is experimenting with a format that’s huge, but only about half the size of their typical supercenter, with much less non-food and non-drug and more ethnic food (everybody lives in Niles).  There are also more electric shopping carts for the handicapped than I’ve ever seen anywhere else, which is appropriate since there is a large elderly facility across the street (and others nearby).

 

Less than a mile east, there’s the new Walmart that opened about a year ago. It’s a traditional Walmart, not a supercenter, so it has few groceries (but there is a Jewel and an Aldi right cross the street). This site also was a Kmart during some earlier incarnation.

 

It’s interesting that Meijer and Walmart are not quite competing head-to-head with their standard supercenters in this area.

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