Local News
City of Garland Buys Hypermart Area to Become ‘Gateway’ to the City
In the Dallas area, a relic of a huge 226,000-square-foot shopping center called Hypermart sits on 24 acres that the City of Garland recently purchased. According to Dallas News, the city spent $6.3 million to buy the building and land that’s been vacant for a decade with the hope that they can develop it to become a “gateway” to the city via a freeway corridor.
City Manager Bryan Bradford told Dallas News, “When you’ve got a property that is in a key entryway into the city and there is an opportunity to acquire that and control its future use, it only makes sense to go ahead and do that…There’s not a developer waiting in the wings that we’re going to be handing the property to. We realize that there could be some time involved.” Though there isn’t a concrete plan, city officials and residents have nixed previous ideas for the old Hypermart which included a sports arena or a storage facility.
So what exactly is a Hypermart? According to an old New York Times article, it was a “…giant supermarket and discount store rolled into one…With cartons of merchandise towering 22 feet high and 70,000 products ranging from televisions to grapefruit to tulip bulbs.” It attracted thousands of visitors every day and was owned by Walmart. Once it closed, nothing could really take its place since it was so enormous.
