Image Courtesy of Walmart
October 10, 2025
Should Walmart be Investing in Shopping Centers?
Walmart acquired two Pennsylvania shopping centers — Monroeville Mall and Bethel Park Shopping Center — earlier this year and just revealed plans to turn the Monroeville location into a mixed-use development featuring retail, dining and entertainment space.
A New York Times article covering the pending Monroeville Mall demolition said Walmart’s plans appear to mark its first move into a real estate strategy first detailed in 2018.
“Walmart owns most of its store sites, but its new purchase makes it a landlord to other merchants, too,” according to the Times. “If the Monroeville project goes well, it could serve as a template for a new way for Walmart and other large players to grow.”
In 2018, L.B. Johnson, VP of construction at Walmart, in an ICSC keynote speech discussed plans for a “Town Center” concept that would see Walmart redeveloping parking lots, empty fields, and other space adjacent to its stores into community spaces that include local restaurants, fitness centers, and health clinics — as well as well as potentially room for movie theaters and activities such as golf driving ranges, ice rinks, and bowling alleys.
“We want to provide community space, areas for the community to dwell,” said Johnson at the time, according to Forbes.
Walmart in January purchased the Monroeville Mall, where George Romero filmed the 1978 zombie-horror film “Dawn of the Dead,” for $34 million and recently applied for a $7.5 million state grant to “transform the space into a modern, mixed-use destination that strengthens the regional economy.”
The redevelopment will include a Walmart, Sam’s Club as well as other new retailers, restaurants and entertainment spaces, as well as a public open space for community use. The mall currently doesn’t have any Walmart banners.
Walmart’s Push To Diversify its Footprint
Veronica Miniello, an associate director of market analytics for CoStar, told CoStar News that Walmart’s purchase of malls helps diversify its retail strategy and gain entry “into denser areas that are typically not suited for its large Supercenter format.”
A JLL report from last year noted that a number of luxury brands, in recent years, have been acquiring the buildings that house their stores in New York City, San Francisco, and Beverly Hills in order to lock in prime locations amid low availability rates — and avoid future rent hikes.
Dillard’s, in August, partnered with a developer to acquire Texas’ Longview Mall, where it’s a tenant, for $34 million in order to help revive the shopping center and prevent it from being acquired by neglectful owners. Chris Johnson, Dillard’s co-CFO, told the Wall Street Journal at the time, “There are some bad actors out there in the mall industry that have been buying malls… Every mall they own deteriorates.”
Home Depot and Publix have likewise bought shopping centers and malls, in some cases, to secure retail space.
In May, Walmart acquired Bethel Park Shopping Center, where it currently has a Walmart store, for $39.6 million, although it has no plans for a major redevelopment. A Walmart spokesman told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4, “Walmart wants to continue to operate in Bethel Park and purchasing the store provided the best opportunity to continue serving our customers in the long-term.”
Discussion Questions
What’s likely behind Walmart’s acquisition of Monroeville Mall and Bethel Park Shopping Center (and similar moves by other retailers)?
Does acquiring malls and shopping centers offer more benefits than drawbacks for retailers?
Poll
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Tom Ryan
Managing Editor, RetailWire
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Walmart is already into real estate as it owns most of its stores and the extensive land they are situated on. Owning malls is a little different, but Walmart’s likely view is that it can successfully reinvigorate and redevelop the sites and integrate Walmart or Sam’s Club stores. This provides a retail expansion opportunity, but it also drives revenue diversification – something Walmart has already been pursuing in other areas like retail media and via the acquisition of Vizio. And owning shopping centers isn’t that unusual for a big retail group: IKEA, via its parent company, owns loads of them!
Walmart’s shopping center forays are the latest example of its business model diversification strategy, one that serves as a hedge against product-based headwinds. As usual, Walmart’s mall moves check more than one box. Walmart can vet tenants based on non-competitive synergies and tout the traffic-driving benefits of nuzzling up to a Walmart store when it is in the mix. Communities benefit as aging properties get a second life.
And it’s not like Walmart has to pick up a new skill of renting out space to complementary merchants – they’ve been doing that in supercenters for decades, whether the local bank, a McDonald’s, eye clinic, etc. This time the store entrances are external rather than internal.
I like this move by Walmart – leading the way as they do so often do. Walmart is uniquely positioned to do this type of development, having both the financial resources and operational capability to do it. Most retailers struggle to deliver profitable quarters and couldn’t risk the capital. This approach to re-imaging B and C class malls is attractive for many reasons, including the investment that goes into the space surrounding the mall. They are truly thinking outside the four walls of their stores. Re-use is a big trend, and re-using malls like the plans described by Walmart seems right for the times. Ultimately the market will decide if it will be successful.
What’s behind it? Apparently WalMart feels it can make more money as a developer than a retailer (at least at the margins….they’re not giving up their core business) I think this really speaks to the fact that they’ve reached saturation….growth opportunities for the stores will mostly come in newly developing areas rather than existing markets.
Yes, they have reached saturation in the U.S.. Unlike other retailers that can’t seem to stop at saturation, they are making a strategic move to continue to grow.
In a post-physical retail-saturation environment, Walmart’s strategy of acquiring and redeveloping shopping centers is an ambitious way to compete on a new kind of “physical business platform.” This moves beyond the simple brick-and-mortar retail model and turns its real estate into a multi-faceted strategic asset. Instead of competing on store-level dynamics, Walmart changes the game by treating the shopping center as the new coherent unit of analysis. This new interconnected, self-reinforcing ecosystem can enhance its core retail business and, defensively, can prevent rivals from gaining a foothold in key markets. So, if Walmart’s core strategy through this experiment is not to be a landlord (typical REIT) but to leverage physical space optionality as the new business platform, it can integrate and strengthen both its physical and digital businesses to compete in a comprehensive, multi-channel, and agentic future that can ultimately redefine physical commerce. The risks are real, with the biggest being the need to develop a different set of core competencies, conduct sound capital allocation, and avoid dilution of executive attention. However, in the long game, it appears Walmart is taking initial steps toward strategic repositioning.
The more strategic question is whether Walmart has a better alternative. In a world where AI agents increasingly mediate commerce and Amazon pursues dominance of the digital infrastructure layer for agentic commerce, controlling the physical infrastructure layer for local commerce might be the only defensible moat left.
Walmart’s acquisition of the Monroeville Mall and Bethel Park Shopping Center reflects a strategic shift from being merely a tenant to becoming a community developer and anchor of local commerce. By controlling these properties, Walmart can reimagine aging retail spaces into vibrant, mixed-use destinations—combining shopping, dining, services, and logistics functions—all while strengthening its core retail ecosystem. This move mirrors similar efforts by other retailers to transform underperforming malls into modern, experience-driven retail hubs that better reflect current consumer behavior.
This strategy builds on Walmart’s long history as an economic engine in local communities. The company’s presence has consistently driven job creation, generated sales and property tax revenue, and attracted complementary businesses. Redeveloping older shopping centers not only revitalizes blighted real estate but also sustains the economic vitality of surrounding neighborhoods. In doing so, Walmart helps municipalities recover valuable tax bases while positioning itself at the heart of renewed retail activity.
While real estate ownership introduces new complexities, the long-term benefits outweigh the risks. Walmart gains control over critical real estate assets, aligns them with its evolving omnichannel strategy, and reinforces its brand as both a retail and community cornerstone. Done well, these redevelopments could serve as a model for how major retailers can reinvigorate aging commercial corridors across America.
As malls have declined, today, mall real estate is likely a good buy. Walmart can buy them relatively cheaply and, most importantly, redevelop them in community centers, rather than trying to reinvigorate retail banners that have long met their limits, as current mall operators seem to do
Perhaps most importantly, the locals will recognize that Walmart is more than just a local store and is actively integrating into the community.