Walmart Requests $455K Tax Break To Reopen Vine City Store

The world’s largest retailer is seeking a property tax break to reopen a shuttered Vine City store and prevent a fresh food drought in the surrounding community.

Walmart is seeking a $10M lease purchase bond from Invest Atlanta, the economic development arm of the city, to abate more than $455K in property taxes over 10 years to build and open a 75K SF Walmart Neighborhood Market store at 835 M.L.K. Jr. Drive, according to Invest Atlanta documents. 

Under the lease purchase bond, Invest Atlanta would hold the title for the property for a decade, and Walmart would pay reduced property taxes. Walmart would regain the title after 10 years and pay full taxes at that time.

The retailer, which generated more than $152B in revenue this past quarter alone, had been operating a Walmart Supercenter there since 2012 but closed it in 2022 after a fire was deliberately set inside the store.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and Invest Atlanta are pushing for incentives to ensure that a lower-priced grocer is open in the Vine City neighborhood to prevent what the city describes in documents as a potential food desert in the area if the store remains closed. Nearly 40% of Vine City residents live below the poverty line, with a median household income of a little more than $26K per year, well below the $52K-per-year average for the city of Atlanta, according to data from Westside Future Fund.

“Although, as a company, Walmart’s access to capital is much greater than others, its loss from the 2022 [fire] has reduced its ability to provide essentials to the Vine City neighborhood. Residents’ limited access to food and difficulty in attracting grocers to disinvested neighborhoods is the main catalyst for this project,” Invest Atlanta said in the proposal document. “Therefore, retaining an established business, which can provide fresh foods at competitive prices is a priority.”

Calls to Dickens, Walmart and Atlanta Council Member Dustin Willis, whose district covers Vine City, weren't returned as of press time.

The site began as a Publix Super Market, which the Florida-based grocery chain shuttered in 2009 “due to excessive shrinkage,” according to documents. Walmart purchased the site in 2012 and opened its Superstore. 

Walmart also shuttered a store at 1801 Howell Mill Road in Berkeley Park, which it closed permanently in 2022 after another fire was set deliberately in the store, Axios reported.

A Walmart spokesperson told Axios at the time that the fires were only one factor for closing the stores and that both locations experienced a “variety of economic headwinds” in the run-up to the arson. The closures left a dearth of grocery options for residents around the store, with two Kroger stores between 2.5 and more than 4 miles away, according to Invest Atlanta. 

Dickens is pushing for the incentive as part of his administration’s healthy food access program in disinvested neighborhoods like Vine City, according to Invest Atlanta documents. Dickens previously told Axios that access to grocery stores in Vine City and other poor neighborhoods was a “moral right for our communities.”

He said the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard is a “nexus” of multiple communities that lack access to fresh, affordable food.

According to documents, the new store, which will cost $10M to build out, will be smaller than its Superstore format, but it will have a heavier emphasis on fresh foods and produce as well as a pharmacy and an Atlanta Police Department substation on the premises.

Julian Bene, a former Invest Atlanta board member and a longtime critic of public tax incentives to private companies and developers, said in this case, the incentive may be justified.

“I would not be knee-jerk opposing this,” Bene told Bisnow. “This is not like giving a tax break to a project in a hot market like along the BeltLine or a hot project like data centers or movie studios. It’s not an obvious crony giveaway.”

The Invest Atlanta board is scheduled to vote on the inducement at Tuesday’s meeting. Walmart previously reported the store could reopen next year.

CORRECTION, NOV. 12, 8:33 P.M. ET: The headline has been updated to reflect that Walmart's tax abatement has not been approved yet.