By Rupert Howell

It looks like Walmart is coming to Sardis at the corner of East Lee and Billy Ferrell Streets. That city’s board of mayor and alderman approved a variance to the parking area during Tuesday’s monthly meeting 

Although Walmart was never mentioned during the meeting and consulting engineer Kyle Williams said the project owner’s name was still confidential, a notice published in this newspaper April 18 stated the variance was being sought by “Walmart Real Estate Business Trust,” of Bentonville, Arkansas.

The company has been opening smaller stores between the larger Supercenters at about the same rate as it is opening Supercenters. The company opened 190 of the small stores  in 2010 and 407 in 2014, according to 24/7 Wall St., a financial news and opinion publishing company.

The company has six different types of stores according to 24/7. It has not yet apparent what type may be located in Sardis. Mayor Billy Russell has made getting a grocery store to locate in Sardis a priority. The town lost its full service supermarket in 2011.

Williams indicated the retail facility would be approximately 10-12,000 square feet and asked for approval for a reduction by 10 spaces from the number of parking spaces required by code.

Walmart Stores still considers its Express format to be a pilot project, though the expansion of the format this year could provide the company with answers to a lot of open questions, the company’s chief financial officer said in March. Charles Holley said Walmart plans to open between 110 and 120 Express stores this year on top of the 20 it already operates, according to Supermarket News.

A similar zoning change was needed recently for the construction of a Walmart Express in Water Valley where considerable opposition surfaced. However the request was withdrawn prior to that city’s planning commission meeting.