At today’s shareholder meeting, Wal-Mart has announced that they are scaling back their new store growth, starting with this year:

Thomas M. Schoewe, the chief financial officer of Wal-Mart, said the company is “committed to providing better returns,” and added, “The message you are hearing today is that we have found a real nice balance between appropriate return and the growth of your great company.”

Mr. Schoewe called the reductions a “moderation” and emphasized that Wal-Mart will still add 20 million square feet of new store space this year. But the cutback is significant because each Wal-Mart supercenter can book sales of $100 million a year, and the giant stores have propelled much of Wal-Mart’s growth.

This year, rather than opening 265 to 270 stores, Mr. Schoewe said, Wal-Mart will open 190 to 200. For the foreseeable future, it will open 170 supercenters a year, well below its average last year.

More from the New York Times: Wal-Mart Scales Back Expansion Plans.

The bulk of Wal-Mart’s increase in sales, over the past few years, has been attributed to new store growth. Scaling back their growth is a large turnaround for the retailer, regardless of how they classify it.

Last week, the City Council of Kaua’i, Hawaii, passed an ordinance restricting retail construction to under 75,000 square feet:

A 75,000-square-foot floor-area limit on retail or wholesale operations. Business square footage would be added together if establishments are within 800 feet of each other and sell similar goods under common management, share check-out counters, or are under common ownership — meaning, for example, that a single retailer could not build two 75,000-square-foot stores around a single parking lot.

While the island already has Costco, Wal-Mart, and K-Mart, this bill seems to be aimed squarely at Wal-Mart’s plans to increase the size of the location there from 119,000 square feet to almost 200,000 square feet. The City Council wants to preserve the character of the small island community and preserve the local, mom and pop stores, that make up the community.

I recently commented on the plans by several retailers to build smaller concept stores. Anti-big box bills like this are just another reason why retailers need to have several construction ideas in their portfolio. One size does not fit every community.

More coverage of the bill from the Honolulu Advertiser. The quote above is from their coverage.

If you live in remote parts of Alaska, your shopping options are limited: either you are shopping at the local village store, which may have limited selection and high prices, or you are ordering from a Wal-Mart or Fred Meyer 400 miles away:

Local prices are so high and inventory so sparse that Seitz, like many Alaskans living far from the road system, buys nearly all her food and household staples from big-box chain stores in cities hundreds of miles away.

At least once a month, she sends her shopping list to Safeway in Fairbanks and pays a small airline to fly her groceries across 300 roadless miles to the Athabascan Indian village of 100 people on the banks of the Yukon River.

The business generated by such customers is impossible to quantify, but it’s big enough that several stores, including Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Best Buy, devote whole mail-order departments to more than 200,000 rural residents spread over an area twice the size of Texas.

This is a very interesting way for these large retailers to provide a solution for a unique situation.

More from CNN: Bush mail brings big-box stores to Alaska’s hinterlands

Christian Trejbal has an editorial in yesterday’s Roanoke Times where he offers his opinion on the big box battle in Blacksburg, VA.

Opponents’ strategy right now — aside from hosting a bake sale fundraiser outside Gillies yesterday and today — is a proposed ordinance that would require large retailers to get council approval before building. It would not ban a big-box, but it is hard to imagine the current council signing off on one.

Unfortunately for the opponents, Virginia courts frown on retroactive standards. They must be kicking themselves that they did not think to pass a law years ago.

He talks about what kind of community Blacksburg is and what big boxes mean to the community.

More from Roanoke.com.

The Wall Street Journal is talking about the smaller sized buildings that retailers are buildingre. Focusing on the electronic retailers Best Buy and Circuit City, the article states that the average size of their new buildings may be 30-40% smaller than their current prototype.

Two factors primarily are fueling the smaller-store phenomenon: Consumer-electronics chains need less space for merchandise as some products get smaller and shoppers increasingly buy music and movies online. And Best Buy and Circuit City, which operate a combined 1,500 U.S. stores, now need smaller structures to penetrate fast-growing suburbs, rural areas and gaps between their larger stores — places that can’t support one of their superstores.

“We’re taking a square footage and a revenue number for a market and, instead of trying to force it into one large box, we’re spreading it across smaller boxes that are more convenient,” Best Buy’s vice president of real estate, Pat Matre, says.

Do these smaller store concepts speak volumes about the state of the electronics industry today? The article alludes to the high volume of movies and music that are bought online, thereby further reducing the amount of space needed for this media in the store.

It seems that retailers are starting to realize that one size does not fit every market. Other retailers, like Home Depot and Wal-Mart, have experimented with smaller store concepts that have allowed those retailers to get in to neighborhoods or areas that they previously would not have been able to get in to.

Wal-Mart has outlined more details on their plans to open stores in India by 2008. Through a joint-venture with India’s Bharti group, the retailer looks to launch in India in 2008 with 75 stores projected within 5-7 years.

India has some pretty tough regulations over the retail/wholesale industry which prevent foreign based companies from establishing shop in the country without going through a joint-venture with an India-based company. Wal-Mart’s intentions to enter the market there have been known for a few months, but on Thursday of last week, more details emerged.

The retailer has it’s sights set on a mid-2008 launch in India, through a joint-venture with Bharti group. The New Delhi-based conglomerate operates India’s largest mobile phone company, Bharti Airtel. After the 2008 launch, plans call for 75 stores within 5-7 years.

Wal-Mart’s international division has had some tough times in some new markets. 2006 saw Wal-Mart pulling out of Germany. How well will the locals embrace Wal-Mart in India?

One bit of information that I find interesting is that the “venture would import only 10 percent of its goods, and source half of the goods from the city where it is located or nearby areas” (source, CNN/Money). Is this an attempt, from the retailer, in playing nice?

Wal-Mart has said that their six-month old store in Chicago has contributed greatly to the community:

Chicago’s first and only Wal-Mart store has produced $2 million in state and local taxes and 443 jobs for West Side residents since it opened in Austin six months ago, the world’s largest retailer said Wednesday.

Wal-Mart wants to forge ahead with its urban strategy by building at least four more stores in Chicago, primarily on the South Side.

[…]

It shows the store has generated more than $2 million in state and local taxes, including $500,000 in city sales taxes alone.

Of the 443 jobs, more than half went to 37th Ward residents.

The fight for Wal-Mart in Chicago has been a tought one and will only get tougher as they look to add four more locations. Will Wal-Mart be able to get deeper into the city limits within Chicago?