Construction on a Wal-Mart Supercenter at the intersection of Rayford and Riley Fuzzel roads has been underway since last summer, and the location is slated to open this spring.
In addition to grocery items and general merchandise, the 182,000-square-foot store will house a garden center, pharmacy and tire and lube express center in the Benders Landing area.
“There’s so much new growth,” Wal-Mart Director of Communications Anne Hatfield said. “With the new growth comes increased demand for fresh groceries [and] helpful merchandise, and we’re responding to that demand.”
The new Wal-Mart will have an on-site gas station, and Hatfield said shoppers can expect a wide selection of Texas-grown produce and a revamped entertainment and technology center.
A new service that will be implemented after the store’s grand opening is online grocery shopping. Customers will be able to order their items online and then pull into a designated parking space where an employee will deliver their order directly to their car.
“That is a service that we’ll be providing a little bit later down the road,” Hatfield said. “Our customers love it.”
With a location on Riley Fuzzel Road, shoppers on the east side of I-45 will no longer have to cross over to Sawdust Road to go to Wal-Mart.
“Each [location] is serving its own community,” Hatfield said. “In this case, if we’ve got more than one store in the same community, then what we’re finding is because there’s so much growth and so many folks that need groceries and things for everyday life, each store is really just serving the immediate communities around them.”
The Benders Landing Wal-Mart will have a bank and a vision center as well as a few other in-store businesses that have yet to be decided on.
“Our customers know that they can come to us and find great deals on the things that they need,” Hatfield said.
The intersection at Riley Fuzzel and Rayford roads has seen a number of new businesses open in the past six to nine months. H-E-B opened a store last summer on the opposite corner, and several retail stores have opened in the following months.