A 170,995-square-foot Walmart Supercenter could rise on the site of a Vermont mall that has sat empty and vandalized for nearly seven years, pending approval from state land-use officials expected to hold hearings in early December.
Diamond Run Mall in Rutland Town, Vermont, opened in 1995 and once housed more than 60 stores, including J.C. Penney, Sears, and Kmart. The 2008 financial crash gutted the tenant base, and the mall never recovered. It closed for good in October 2019. Since then, the 445,000-square-foot property has drawn vandals and graffiti, becoming the kind of commercial eyesore that drags down a community rather than anchoring one.
Now Walmart wants to build a Supercenter on the site, a project that would create more than 100 additional jobs if completed, The Sun reported. The proposed store would be roughly 171,000 square feet, large, but still less than half the footprint of the abandoned mall it would replace. Completion is projected for 2027, assuming the project clears its regulatory hurdles.
The Vermont Land Use Review Board, the state body that oversees major development permits, is expected to hold hearings on the proposal during the first week of December. A demolition permit for the existing mall structure has been pending since last year under Zamias, the company that currently owns the property, but the building still stands.
Mary Ashcroft, chair of the Rutland Town selectboard, said the community would see "a significant bump in revenue" if the Walmart Supercenter is built. For a small Vermont town that has watched its largest retail property decay for the better part of a decade, the economic logic is straightforward: a functioning store that employs people and creates tax revenue beats an empty shell attracting trespassers.
The proposed development plan also includes a potential expansion of the nearby Spartan Arena and a hotel component, though specific terms for those additions remain unclear. If the full project moves forward, it would transform one of Rutland Town's most visible failures into an active commercial corridor.
Walmart's presence in Rutland Town is not new. The retailer already operates a store on Plaza Road. But the existing location could close once the new Supercenter opens, meaning the net job gain and retail footprint shift depend on how Walmart manages the transition between sites.
That question, whether the Plaza Road store stays open, is one the company has not publicly settled. Walmart has framed the Supercenter as an addition of more than 100 jobs, but if the older store shuts down, the real employment picture changes. Residents and local officials will want clarity before the first concrete is poured.
Diamond Run Mall's decline followed a pattern familiar to communities across the country. Anchor tenants pulled out after the 2008 crash. Smaller shops followed. Foot traffic dried up, and the economics of maintaining a sprawling retail complex no longer worked. By the time the doors closed in 2019, the mall had become a monument to a retail model that stopped functioning years earlier.
What makes Rutland Town's situation worse is the limbo that followed. Zamias, the property owner, obtained a demolition permit but never acted on it. The building sat. Vandals moved in. The site became a liability rather than an asset, a pattern that other communities have tried to address through local ordinances targeting commercial blight and retail neglect.
For Rutland Town taxpayers, the cost of that inaction has been real. An abandoned 445,000-square-foot structure creates no sales tax, no payroll, and no economic activity. It does create calls to local law enforcement and code-enforcement headaches. The Walmart proposal, whatever its imperfections, at least offers a path out of that dead end.
Walmart itself has faced scrutiny on multiple fronts in recent months. The Department of Justice demanded years of pricing data from the retailer as part of an expanding beef antitrust probe. And cities like Seattle have moved to regulate algorithmic pricing at grocery chains, including Walmart, reflecting broader tensions between big-box retailers and the communities they serve.
Still, in Rutland Town, the immediate calculus is simpler. A community that lost its commercial anchor nearly seven years ago has a chance to replace it with a functioning store and more than 100 jobs. The alternative is more of the same: an empty building, no revenue, and no plan.
The retailer has also dealt with consumer safety issues, including a widening frozen berry recall that prompted the chain to pull products in 16 states. National controversies aside, the Rutland Town project will rise or fall on local approval and whether Walmart delivers on its promises to the community.
The Vermont Land Use Review Board's expected hearings in early December represent the project's first major regulatory test. Board officials will evaluate the proposed construction on a site that has already been zoned for commercial use but requires fresh permits for a development of this scale.
Several questions remain unanswered. The relationship between Zamias, the current property owner, and Walmart, whether a sale, lease, or partnership is in play, has not been publicly detailed. The status of the long-pending demolition permit is also unclear. And the scope of the Spartan Arena expansion and hotel component has not been spelled out in any public filing referenced so far.
For Rutland Town residents, the hearings will be the first real opportunity to weigh in on a proposal that could reshape the town's commercial landscape for decades. Whether the board moves quickly or bogs the project down in review will say a lot about Vermont's appetite for the kind of private investment that turns dead malls into working storefronts.
Communities that let commercial properties rot for years and then throw up regulatory roadblocks when someone finally shows up with a plan have no right to complain about economic decline.