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Critics predicted that Wal-Mart’s plan for a downtown Supercenter would decimate other retailers, compromise the area’s historic architecture and bring traffic chaos.

It has done none of those things, many now report. The 199,993-square-foot store, which opened Aug. 25, is located on Tchoupitoulas Street in the Lower Garden District, separated by a levee wall from New Orleans’ port. The project took three years to complete, in part because of opposition around the issues of traffic congestion, the impact on local retailers and historic preservation.

Wal-Mart adjusted the planned size of the store and parking lot to accommodate adjacent historic landmarks and used brick cladding to complement the architectural style of nearby cotton warehouses. Pres Kabacoff, CEO of HRI Properties, New Orleans, the project’s development firm, says the results show the store is a positive addition to the district.

“I think the fears were unfounded, and the answer lies in believing your eyes,” he said.

New Orleans isn’t the only place where Wal-Mart is tweaking store design to make its buildings blend better with their surroundings.

“We’ve reached a stage where we can be flexible,” Robert w. Stoker, Wal-Mart’s senior real estate manager, said at ICSC’s New York Conference & Deal Making in December. “We no longer have to build a gray-blue battleship box.”

A Wal-Mart store in Rego Park, N.Y., will occupy several levels in a high-rise. Another, in Round Rock, Texas, features a Main Street-style exterior, with varying storefronts and elevations to diminish the store’s large scale.

The New Orleans Wal-Mart store has sparked new residential development that replaces aging public housing on the site. And about $20 million in tax increment financing went toward the project.

The success of the downtown Wal-Mart has prompted other chains to look at the area, says Wade Ragas, a professor at the Real Estate Research Center of the University of New Orleans. “The store is an unbelievable success for Wal-Mart,” he said. “They’re doing some of highest per [square] foot sales in the state there.”

Lowe’s and Home Depot are now building on abandoned sites at the edge of New Orleans’s central business district, Ragas says. “I’m hopeful Wal-Mart will find somewhere where they can build a second downtown store.”

— ST