Walmart Buys Bethel Park Shopping Center

(WPXI) BETHEL PARK, Pa. — When it comes to buying real estate in western Pennsylvania, Walmart isn’t stopping with the Monroeville Mall. After the world’s largest retailer bought the region’s largest shopping mall last year for $34 million in cash as a future redevelopment project, according to real estate records, Walmart has now bought the Bethel Park Shopping Center on Library Road, a retail property, unlike Monroeville Mall, in which it already operates a store as a major anchor. According to real estate records, an affiliate of the big box retailer called Wal-Mart Real Estate Business Trust paid $39.6 million, which translates to more than $5 million more for a shopping center of a little more than 200,000 square feet, a retail complex around one-sixth the size of the more than 1.2 million-square-foot Monroeville Mall. A spokesman for the Bentonville-based retailer confirmed the company bought the retail property and indicated to expect no changes to the Bethel Park Shopping Center. “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,” said Mark Rickel, director of corporate communications for Walmart, in an email, adding, “there are no plans to expand the store.” He further added that “Walmart owns most of its store properties and generally prefers to do so.” But a site plan for Bethel Park Shopping Center detailed on the website of the property’s leasing representative, Echo Retail, show a store that’s smaller that typical Walmart supercenters and larger than its smaller neighborhood market prototype.