Chick-fil-A, Sam's Club could be coming to Mooney's Visalia Commons

John Lindt
Updated ·4 min read

A Fresno engineering firm has filed plans with the city of Visalia for 27-acre shopping center at the southwest corner of Mooney and Visalia Parkway at the southern end of town.

Lars Andersen & Associates submitted the new site plan to the city for a hearing this week. The shopping center’s main tenant would be one of largest retail stores in Visalia at 171,000 square feet. Next to the store is a 12-pump gas station, a car wash and several restaurants. The proposed big shopping center has 922 parking spaces.

The location of the project could serve both Tulare and Visalia.

The scale of the project has Visalians talking. The revised plan for the shopping center, called Visalia Commons, is the same regional shopping center where the Visalia City Council turned down a proposed CarMax dealership a few years ago - but the center does have some new existing restaurants and stores along the frontage including Texas Roadhouse, Les Schwab, Panda Express and Dutch Brothers - already in business.

City Planner Josh Dan says the engineer's filing does not include an operational statement for the big tenant but the city will require that - so it may be clearer in the next few weeks. A preliminary hearing will be held Wednesday. Sources say the mystery retailer is likely a Sam's Club store although no one will go on the record.

A warehouse competitor to Costco, the company is owned by Walmart. Visalia has several Walmarts but no Sam’s Club that, like rival Costco, requires membership to shop. There are Sam’s Club stores in Bakersfield and Fresno. Both have company gas stations next to the stores like the Visalia site plan. Besides general merchandise, Sam's Club stores sell groceries and have an automotive service center. The average Sam's Club store employs about 200 people.

Visalia has several Walmarts but no Sam’s Club that, like rival Costco, requires membership to shop.
Visalia has several Walmarts but no Sam’s Club that, like rival Costco, requires membership to shop.

The company recently announced they would add more stores, and the stores would be larger.For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2023, Sam’s Club’s revenue was $84.3 billion. There are almost 600 clubs across the U.S and Puerto Rico and each averages approximately 136,000 square feet. The first Sam’s Club (named for Walmart founder Sam Walton) opened in Midwest City, Oklahoma, in 1983.

Visalia Mayor Brian Poochigian says he is not sure if the store is in fact, Sam's Club, but if it were, that would be good news for Visalia, not just because of the sales tax benefit, but because it would offer “more choice for local shoppers.” Big discount warehouses are popular here with Costco announcing months ago it would build a second store in North Visalia at Riggin and Shirk. But as of this date, Costco hasn't followed through on the North Visalia location even as the property is being annexed in December.

Planner Brandon Smith says Costco recently has been mum on their plans.Would a competitor plopping  down within blocks of their south Visalia Costco store make a difference in their calculations? Costco is Visalia's largest sales tax contributor. Dan cautions that the environmental review for the original Visalia Commons shopping center, done in 2020, may change, depending on what exactly is now being proposed. He says he does not know who the tenant is. A representative of the engineering firm said he could not comment.

New Chick-fil-A coming to Visalia?

Besides this potential big news - a second possible tenant in the same shopping center may cause a big buzz around Visalia. A site plan for a large 5,600 square-foot fast food restaurant with a double drive-through appears to have the design of a Chick-fil-A store, although this is a little more speculative. The plan has the characteristic umbrellas in the outdoor eating area.The fast food giant has tested other possible locations in Visalia in recent history. Chick-fil-A has a significant fan club in Visalia, who have long urged the city to attract one of these popular restaurants to town.Wikipedia reports that the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain is the largest specializing in chicken sandwiches.

Headquartered in College Park, Georgia, Chick-fil-A operates 2,988 restaurants across 48 states.Chick-fil-A has retained its popularity  in polls as the country's favorite fast food chain for the eighth consecutive years..Chick-fil-A grossed an average of $4.8 million per restaurant in 2016, despite opening only 6 days a week, the highest sales of all fast-food restaurants in the United States. Whataburger was second with $2.7 million per restaurant average.

In 2019, Chick-fil-A reported $11.3 billion in sales in the United States, behind only McDonald's with $40.4 billion in sales that year.

To compete with Chick-fil-A, fried chicken chain Popeyes, followed by others, introduced a fried chicken sandwich in 2019, starting what was termed the Chicken Sandwich Wars.

Visalia has gone bonkers for chicken restaurants in the past few years attracting many of the nations’ biggest chicken chains to town with even some double locations here.

Chick-fil-A typically sites only one location in a metro area, even in much larger cities like Fresno.

This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Chick-fil-A could be coming to Mooney's new Visalia Commons