[StBernard] Wall Mart Aquires Huge Tract of Land in Eastern NO

[Westley Annis]

One's best bet for a pharmacy is a Wal-Mart Pharmacy. Those $4 prescriptions
beets the 2-3x cost of those "pawn-dealing drug stores". 

However, to get a Wal-Mart a community must be willing to have something to
"get a Wal-Mart".  That means population, support, etc. As much as a
Wal-Mart is hated throughout the nation for sucking up smaller mom-'n-pops,
the consumers appear to be the winner in the outcome. 

With population comes traffic, even more crime (depending upon where you get
the population from (New Orleans/N.O. East, out of town or people who feel
it's safer to come back into the community). But, until "the dust clears"
from the horrific explosion St. Bernard parish took, it's going to keep
big-box businesses away and da parish will have to deal with higher-priced
smaller business proprietors who really cannot keep up with
larger-name-branded stores. 

Once again, the parish may never get some of those stores mentioned (Target,
Macy's, etc., not just because the economy is in the tank), but because they
look at per Capita income (not the $18,000+ that's currently demographically
in place in SB); also, a factor is location/ingress/egress to a super
highway (Judge Perez, etc. won't count). 

Don't know if anyone's going to take a chance 20-30 years down the road
after recovery to vitalize Paris Rd into a "Gateway Entrance/Avenue" with
large big-box items and land fills turned into commercial "beachfront or
Lakeview" land development (as it has not sparked interest in the past
century. 

So, it's back to Walgreens for the next few years. Eventually some stores
will undertake part of the recovery depending upon the economy improving and
the Chamber/The Economic Development Commission doing their job to attract
new business besides a 1000 sq ft candy store or clothing biz. 

It's frustrating when a community who's trying to make a recovery after a
disaster gets smacked with a recession/depression before it has the
opportunity to recovery. In fact, it's sad enough that many have may have to
make pertinent, decisions that affect the duration of their lifetimes.

--jer--