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Community Members Discuss Options For Closed Walmart, QuikTrip

Nadya Faulx
/
KMUW

Wichita city officials and District 1 residents used Saturday’s district gathering to get input about the neighborhood near 13th and Oliver. Within a week a Walmart grocery store and a QuikTrip gas and convenience store were closed, leaving few options for nearby residents.

  

  

Credit Nadya Faulx / KMUW
/
KMUW
Attendees were asked what products they had to leave their neighborhood in order to purchase, as well as what kinds of businesses they would like to see move into the area.

Suggestions for what to bring to the area included another grocery store, clothing retail shop, education center and sit-down restaurant. 

John Hall, the director of Housing and Social Services, said the city needs to be strategic in what businesses it recruits and can sustain.

District 1 Representative Lavonta Williams said she has been talking to Walmart and QuikTrip about what businesses the neighborhood would like to see move in.

"We don't want it to be a liquor store, we don't want it to be anything that's an entertainment area, and we don't want it to be a payday lending facility," she said.

Williams said there will be more meetings to discuss not only solutions for 13th and Oliver, but for areas around the city with vacant buildings and little access to quality food.

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Follow Nadya Faulx on Twitter @NadyaFaulx.

To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.