An Outing in Edgewood

Well I guess you'd have to say that Edgewood New Mexico is now a metropolis, yesiree. We not only got us a Smith's (with a brand new Starbucks-eat your heart out P. Dub) and a RadioShack and a Walgreens... we now got a brand new Wal-Mart super Center! I missed the grand opening last Friday but I got up early today and hurried on over to get a glimpse.

I was a little worried that they might not open until 10am, but low and behold-come to find out. It's a 24-hour Wal-Mart--whooee. It is reported to be 214,000 square feet and according to the newspaper (the Mountain View telegraph)..."He said the taxable revenues from Wal-Mart might be as high as $70 to $120 million, which means the town could gain anywhere from $1.8 million to more than $3 million a year in added tax revenue." (That is probably higher than the gross national income of Edgewood).

I began, the excursion by having a little brekie at the teeny little McDonald's. While I studied the map of the 214,000 ft.².

I spent about an hour walking the periphery and then wandered up and down a few aisles finding a few items to add to my shopping cart (all in the interest of stimulating the economy, of course). The good news is that it's the perfect place to take a walk-big wide aisles that take an hour to circumnavigate-at least. It was all shiny and new, fresh smelling with dozens of skylights and employees at every counter. The food Center is very well-stocked, but I didn't see that the prices are any less than Smith's. But they also sell alcohol in fairly limited quantities.

Even first thing in the morning there were quite a number of shoppers there- mostly elderly. But the employees were all very careful and seemed excited. It will be interesting to see how it looks in six months.