Walmart may be Mexico’s largest employer and most profitable company, but that doesn’t mean its megastores always find success.
Last month, the Walmart store in Plaza Mexico, one of Guadalajara’s oldest shopping malls, closed its doors.
The closure has had a notable effect on the fortunes of the rest of the 120-odd stores in the mall, situated on Avenida Mexico in an affluent area of the city. Sales have plummeted since Walmart closed, store owners say, with some indicating that business is so bad they may have to shut up shop themselves.
The owner of a jewelry store told a local newspaper that sales have dipped by 35 percent in the past month, thanks to Walmart’s absence and the heat wave.
A hairdresser said many patrons of the mall would combine shopping trips to the “super” with visits to her salon. That can no longer happen, she lamented.
An optician noted that trade has dropped significantly on Tuesdays, which were always busy days in the mall, as Walmart offered its popular “Martes de Frescura” discounts on fruits and vegetables.
According to one report, the mall’s proprietors have been trying to lure other supermarket chains – Chedraui and Soriana, for example – to fill the space but with little success. News segments on radio programs have suggested the store will be torn down to make way for an apartment block. Several luxury residential/office high-rises are nearing completion on the other side of Avenida Mexico, directly facing the mall.
Mall administrators say a “solution” will be found soon and that existing development plans for the plaza will go ahead. These include refurbishing the mall’s underground movie theater complex (abandoned for more than a decade) and renovations to the Suburbia department store that anchors the opposite end of the mall to where Walmart once operated.
Plaza Mexico opened in 1979 and was the city’s third mall, after Plaza del Sol and Plaza Patria.