What Wal-Mart Brings To New Encinitas

Welcome Wal-Mart,

Here is a simple math fact to explain at least one reason ‘Why’ many of us might welcome Wal-Mart.

There is an element to this newest addition to the New Encinitas ‘Golden Corridor’ along El Camino Real; that cannot help but endear them to many of the 64,000 residents of New Encinitas.

The Math goes like this:

The ‘Average Sales Per Square Foot’ for Wal-Marts across the nation that are currently retailing; is $430 per square foot per.

And when you multiply that $430 per square foot by the agreed upon square-footage of the new Wal-Mart footprint of 96,095 sq. ft. this equals $4,132,085 in sales per year.

Which, after the sales tax travels to Sacramento and returns to our City, adds $413, 850 in direct income into the City of Encinitas General Operating Fund.

But, that’s not all; in addition to $413 K is the added spending of the fifty or so employees per day working at the new New Encinitas Wal-Mart and whom will no doubt be buying breakfast, or lunch, or dinner or groceries or paying for car repairs or hundreds and hundreds of different ways contributing to the local economy.

Totaling to roughly a half million dollars a year in additional income each year.

What Now?

So, now that Wal-Mart has chosen to join us here in paradise and spent a lot of time and money following the rules of the City of Encinitas in converting their normal store size and operations downward to accommodate Encinitas ordinances and off-site parking requirements; now that Wal-Mart has performed all the necessary duties and paid the required fees; let us welcome them.

For a half million dollars in sales tax added to our City’s income stream pays handsomely for quite a few amenities.

Watering playing fields, underwriting senior lunches, funding grants for artist colonies, acquiring new ladder trucks, funding Junior Lifeguard programs, adding extra public safety for athletic events, one-day pet clinics, and hundreds of other expenditures that residents and visitors to Encinitas enjoy and agree are important every day.

Don’t Fear Wal-Mart, Fear the ‘Draft’ General Plan

It is ironic in a way that Wal-Mart has chosen New Encinitas to locate and invest in, right at the same moment the Planning Staff is promoting the new General Plan 2035 that targets the area of 2200 ‘multi-family housing units; ‘ironic’ because part of the conditions Wal-Mart had to meet was off-site parking, because Wal-Mart by its definition would require more parking that Home Expo did because under the new General Plan the intersection of Leucadia Boulevard and El Camino Real that on a circulation map for the region is graded as a ‘D’ most of the day and as a ‘failed’ intersection during morning and evening traffic; the entire area is targeted by the City Planners and this is a quote, for “the ‘conscious and deliberate creation of gridlock between peak AM and PM hours for the particular reason to increase walkability, bicycling and mass transit.

Meaning that Wal-Mart is bravely locating, risking capital to serve our region while fully cognizant to the clear fact that if Staff gets its way, twice a day vehicle access to El Camino Real, a prime arterial 8 lane thoroughfare will come to a screeching halt. A ‘planned’ screeching halt.

The Network believes that creating gridlock twice a day and allowing the two commercial corridors to slowly degrade in their ‘levels of service’ LOS that will result in potential customers driving around New Encinitas and choosing to spend their dollars elsewhere is not a sound economic plan for our future.

ADDING WAL-MART to the ‘Golden Corridor’ of New Encinitas.

Over the last year as Wal-Mart determined to sublease the retail space vacated by Home Expo, I have repeatedly been asked,  “Aren’t you worried that Wal-Mart will compete with the current members of the New Encinitas Network and hurt their business?”

The answer is, ”Of course, I am. I’m always genuinely concerned for the businesses we are committed to represent and help market but, Wal-Mart has fulfilled each and every requirement by the City and looks to be adding over four million dollars a year in sales to the New Encinitas commercial corridor each year.

Worrying about Wal-Mart alone hurting New Encinitas business when the financial danger is the new ‘draft’ General Plan is like ‘being distracted by the discovery of a honey bee’s hive hidden in the trees bordering your garden; distracted to the point that you fail to recognize that as a horde of locusts are descending upon your farm and quickly blacking out the sky.