The Walmart on Madison’s Far West Side will be among 12 stores in the state slated for renovations and upgrades designed to increase in-store offerings and improve online sales.
The retailer announced Wednesday that it will spend $42 million on the upgrades, which will also include stores in Beaver Dam, Delavan and Lake Geneva. The investments are part of $11 billion in capital expenditures for Walmart in its fiscal year 2019 as it tries to compete with growing competition from online retailers and an increasing list of grocers who are adding online shopping, curbside pickup and home delivery.
“In Wisconsin, we recognize that our customers desire a personalized shopping experience to fit their needs, and its vital that we invest in our stores and technology in order to best serve them,” Todd Peterson, Walmart’s regional general manager, said in a statement.
The remodeling of the Madison store on Watts Road will begin this fall and will add a bakery and deli and expand what is now a limited produce section to include more organic produce, said Cristin Kieser, a spokeswoman for Walmart. The project will also enhance the baby department, add a state-of-the-art electronics department with interactive displays and make the store easier to navigate with wider aisles and lower fixtures.
Improvements also include the addition of ordering groceries online and picking them up curbside. The company offers the pickup service at 13 stores in the state and plans to roll out the program to 17 other locations in the coming year, it said.
Some stores will also get “Scan & Go” technology, which allows customers to scan items with their mobile devices while shopping in the store, pay instantly and skip the checkout line.
Also coming to stores in Milwaukee will be “Walmart Pickup Towers.” The devices are like a high-tech vending machine that allows customers to pick up orders placed online by scanning a bar code sent to their smart phone.
The Madison store, at 7202 Watts Road, was constructed in 1988 as part of a $20 million project that included a Sam’s Club outlet. But since that time, the Madison area has become one of the most competitive retail markets in the Midwest.
The additions have included Costco, Festival Foods, Hy-Vee and the expansion of Pick ‘n Save, Metcalfe’s Market, Woodman’s Market, Kohl’s and Target stores. The region has also seen the redevelopment of Hilldale Shopping Center, improvements to the East Towne and West Towne malls and the construction of the Shoppes at Prairie Lakes in Sun Prairie, home to major retailers like Target, Costco, Cabela’s and a Woodman’s Market.
Walmart has upgraded many of its locations in southern Wisconsin over the years and in 2007 opened a Supercenter in Monona along the Beltline. But in January, it shuttered its 106,000-square-foot Sam’s Club store, located across the parking lot from the Watts Road Walmart. Kieser said she did not have any information about the plans for the former Sam’s Club building.
Other Walmart stores around the state scheduled for upgrades include the Milwaukee suburbs of Franklin and Germantown, Neenah, Sparta, Superior, and in the northwestern part of the state, Hayward, New Richmond and St. Croix Falls.
