Walmart will solve a longstanding Roanoke transit problem by building a bus stop and shelter at its store at Valley View Mall.

A 14-foot-long shelter with a bench at the edge of the store parking lot will be a step up for riders who today sometimes stand in mud and ice. The project will coincide with a store remodeling this winter and spring, according to details on file with the city. 

Bus advocates have urged officials to improve the stop for more than 15 years but efforts stalled. Some people blamed red tape and said this week that breaking through it is cause for celebration. Walmart plans to celebrate its remodeling April 24, by which time the new stop should be done, Walmart spokeswoman Mariel Messier said Tuesday.

The Valley View Walmart is a top destination in the Valley Metro system and draws 150 to 250 bus riders daily, according to a November 2024 estimate. It sits on two routes that connect downtown Roanoke with the mall area.

Right now, buses drop riders headed to the Walmart at a spot on the shoulder of the Valley View Mall ring road marked by a sign. Patrons must negotiate a small hill — slick from wet weather this week — when going to or from the closest store entrance about 90 feet away.

“Look at it, I mean, it’s terrible,” rider Debra Smith said as she waited for the bus with five bags of groceries. “It just doesn’t look like a bus stop. It looks like something that they just threw together.”

Karen Michalski-Karney of the board of directors of Greater Roanoke Transit Co., which operates Valley Metro, recalled that the deficiencies of the bus stop were an issue before she joined the panel more than 10 years ago and date at least as far back as 2009.

“We saw people standing there in the heat, in the rain, in the cold, in the snow and really thought that there was a need for a shelter,” said Michalski-Karney, the board’s longest-serving incumbent and executive director of the Blue Ridge Independent Living Center.

Progress on making it better “has taken forever,” said former city councilwoman Anita Price, also a bus transportation advocate. “Why it took so long, it had to do with a whole lot of bureaucratic red tape – who had the right of way, who did this, who did that.”

In 2016, Valley Metro received grant money and settled on a contractor to enclose the stop along the ring road with a shelter and add a ramp to the parking lot, which is below the elevation of the road, at a cost of $255,000. Walmart endorsed the plan. But mall management and retailer Sears weren’t immediately on board. Sears’ lack of support – the reason for which remains unclear – factored in halting the initiative, even though the retailer owned only a small part of the proposed bus stop expansion footprint. 

The Sears store later closed.

Valley Metro reallocated the money to the improvement of other bus stops. There are 800 in the system.

Valley Metro General Manager Kevin Price said in 2019 that officials would revisit the need for a bus stop enhancement “at a later date.”

Last summer, a Walmart construction official and Price hashed out the final details of the upcoming new bus stop over emails, a copy of which were released to The Rambler. With the decision to put it on Walmart’s property, consent from the owner of the former Sears and mall management were no longer needed.

Price said Tuesday he and Walmart officials hadn’t yet determined such details as whether or how to share undisclosed costs. Valley Metro still needed to decide which of two bus lines that routinely go through the area will service the stop. In addition, discontinuation of the current stop when the new one opens “sounds about right” but hadn’t been fully decided, he said.

Mayor Joe Cobb said by email that he recognized the project as “a collaborative effort made possible through staying in conversation and working relationship with Walmart. I’m excited that we’re getting closer to this becoming a reality.”

The new bus stop will be about a third of the size of the one planned for the ring road location 10 years ago. But the final result will be a boon to riders such as Doug Jordan. Tired from shopping, riders sometimes overturn a grocery cart so they have somewhere to sit other than a small bench suitable for only two or three people, he said. This spring, they should be under a roof.