There was an interesting post about the possibility of a Walmart moving into the city of Buffalo. Personally, I think it's inevitable as a continuing part of the recent suburbanizatin of Buffalo. By this I don't mean that more and more people are moving to the suburbs - I mean the city itself is becoming more suburban. All of the recent development in North Buffalo - along Elmwood just south of Hertel (Home Depot, etc.), along Delaware around Hertel (from IHOP to Target) - there have been more chains, strip malls and parking lots appearing, making these major arteries feel more like Niagara Falls Blvd. or Sheridan than urban strips.

All of this is a shame, too, because if you look at Hertel in the past 10 years, it's really been developing nicely into a pleasant urban village - lots of walkable shopping and restaurants. Sure, it's always had these things, but in the past few years it's been improving quite a bit. There's also been a recent spurt of both new apartments & condos downtown (600-700 block of Main St.), as well as restoration of older buildings that have been borded up for as long as I can remember (Oak St., I think). If the city wants to grow and improve itself, these are the sorts of areas and projects it needs to push, and stop selling land to strip mall developers who will continue to make any kind of positive urban landscape to develop.

Anyway, one of the commentors there mentioned the idea of Walmart inserting itself as part of a normal city block instead of a big box suburban outlet surrounded by thousands of parking spaces. This is obviously more appealing and could be a sort of catalyst for other development (depending on where it goes) but let's not ignore the fact that it's still Walmart. These are still going to be minimum wage retail jobs, and it's still going to push a lot of local shops out of business. So I'm still opposed. It's just good to see people are thinking about these things. The posts on Buffalo Rising often lead to interesting and intelligent discussions on the city's future.

Will Buffalo be hurt by the big retail giants? Well yes and no so let me explain. Buffalo is an incredibly poor, shrinking and relatively stupid/uneducated/illiterate/non-techology focused city even compared to Rochester one hour east.
The only reason Buffalo has the Airport handling 6 million visitors, and the retail and many other businesses is due to the patronage of the canadians who find it cheaper and believe it or not more convenient. Without the canadians Buffalo wouldnt even have the population or the wealth to attract the walmarts and k-marts that it has now much less higher end retail....and without the canadians Buffalo would have higher fairs than Rochester no doubt.
Now after saying this why did I have to put Buffalo down by saying its "relatively stupid/uneducated/illiterate/non-techology focused" because when people think of small business in Buffalo they think restaurants, retail and hair dressers. In other words low capital and low education.
Buffalonians need to think of small business in terms of high technology, high education, high value services across wide swaths of industry and business. The fact that we Buffalonians think in terms of the lowest intelligence/lowest skill/lowest education/lowest value/lowest technology possible says why we are continuing to fail as a 21st century city.
--------------------------
However...there is opportunity for something different. The front of a Wal-Mart supercenter tends to be shops anyway. The doctor's office, the eye glass store, a Subway, a photo shop, the grocery store, etc. Although, they're all contained behind blank walls. If you put the store basically on a city block you could arrange it so that the front of the store has windows for each individual shop to give it a retail-storefront appearance. Basically make the Wal-Mart an urban retail block in and of itself. The only skin off Wal-Mart's back is that it looks slightly different than all their other stores. But innovation is supposed to be what they're good at. Plus, in my mind, this could fulfill the need for a grocery store in an underserved area, which is a big deal.
Now, having said that, I fully understand that this might squash whatever existing locally owned businesses were trying to germinate in whatever area this thing goes. And that is very bad. But, if its going to happen anyway (as Wal-Mart has a history of doing whatever they want), the city might as well try to make the store part of an urban fabric with built-in potential for adaptive reuse. This would be a small victory in what would otherwise be an unmitigated disaster.

http://buffalorising.com/story/how_will_the_retail_climate_ch#sca