The Milton Board of Adjustment has taken a couple of necessary first steps toward welcoming a Walmart Neighborhood Market into an area of the city sorely in need of grocery shopping options.
If plans come to fruition, the Arkansas-based retail giant will locate its grocery store at 6275 U.S. Highway 90, the former home of a long vacated Bealls retail outlet. Walmart was given the go ahead Monday to tear down the building that once housed Bealls so that it can erect a 60,724-square-foot structure in its place.
“It’s blight as it stands now,” County Commissioner Kerry Smith said of the existing shopping center. “It’s a blighted vacant building and I love that somebody’s coming in to do something with it. This is great news. I’m happy to see someone coming in there.”
The Walmart Neighborhood Market stores offer a full range of grocery shopping opportunities, including meat, produce, a deli, a bakery and beer and wine sales. The new location will be more convenient than what exists now for many living south and east of the city’s Blackwater River Bridge.