I will be out of town for the holidays until the day after Christmas. Don’t expect much blogging in the mean time.

There has been a lot of interest in the fourth WalMart design, so I want to give readers an update. The development teams of the first three locations were all extremely friendly and cooperative. They did a great job taking the community’s concerns seriously and answering questions promptly. Unfortunately, the developers of the fourth site, A & R Companies, have refused to answer any questions about the site. Their policy is that they don’t give interviews, and don’t talk about developments that are in the pipeline. WalMart’s representative has been very friendly, but apparently has not reached an agreement to provide information on this fourth site.

I can tell you the fourth site will be at the Capitol Gateway development, on East Capitol Street just inside the District border, near Capitol Heights Metro. WalMart will be part of the commercial component of the development, which takes up multiple blocks and includes several new residential buildings. Here is a site plan, from an old DCmud post.

On top of that, there’s not to much say. Rumor is that none of the four WalMarts will have surface parking, but that alone doesn’t guarantee urbanity. We could be looking at a design as bad as this one in Salt Lake City, or one as good as the H Street proposal in DC. Unfortunately, we’ll just have to wait to find out.